? 




Book ti 



Q,a, 



PROVINCIAL PICTURES 

BY BRUSH AND PEN. 
DANIEL GOODWIN, Jr. 



Provincial Pictlrbs 

BY BRUSH AND PEN: 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the Bostonian Society, in the 

Council Chamber of the Old State-House, 

Boston, May ii, 1886. 



BY 

DANIEL GOODWIN, Jr., 

Member of the Chicago Historical Societv. 



CHICAGO: 

FERGUS PRINTING COMPANY 

1886. 



PROCEEDINGS. 



'' I ^HE regular meeting of the Bostonian Society was 
^ held at the Council Chamber, Old State- House, 
Boston, May ii, 1886. Mr. Curtis Guild, president, in 
the chair; Mr. Wm. Clarence Burrage, secretary. 

After the election of new members and the reading of 
the regular reports, the president called attention to a 
large number of gifts and loans. Among them was the 
original report of the executors of the Huguenot council- 
lor, James Bowdoin, consisting of fifty-five pages and, 
signed by the executors. Gov. James Bowdoin, James Pitts, 
and Thomas Fluckcr. Also a book containing hundreds of 
autographs of early Bostonians, with original deeds, bonds, 
receipts, and letters, collected by Daniel Goodwin, Jr. 

A pane of glass from the Royall House, Medford, with 
original signature of Isaac Royall, written with a diamond; 
a photograph of the house formerly occupied by Daniel 
Webster, ^y Somerset Street; a gilded figure of Mercury 
which stood over the stores of Hon. F. \V. Lincoln and C. 
G. Hutchinson, and said to be the oldest emblematical 
sign in Boston; an oil portrait of Gen. Benj. F. Butler, 
painted in 1850; a large number of articles in pottery, 
china, and wood, including the Ichabod Nichols punch 



4 PROCEEDINGS. 

bowl from Salem; an original prescription by Dr. Joseph 
Warren shortly before his death to James Pitts, in 1775. 

There was also an exhibition of old oil portraits in the 
Council Chamber: 

Susannah Lintlall, painted b\' Smibert in 1728. 
James Bowdoin, by Badger in 1747. 
James Pitts and Elizabeth Bowdoin Pitts, by Black- 
burn in 1757. 
Gen. Wm. Brattle, by Copley in 1756. 
Gen. Menry Dearborn, by Gilbert Stuart in 18 12. 
Samuel Pitts of Harvard, class of 1830, crayon by 
Frederick E. Wright. 
Also photographs of Smibert's portraits of John and 
p:iizabeth Lindall Pitts, 1728, and Copley's portraits of 
Samuel Pitts, Jonathan Mountfort, Gov. Moses Gill, Ste- 
phen Browne, and Mrs. Mary Barron Browne, all painted 
about 1770. 

President Guild introduced Mr. Daniel Goodwin, Jr., of 
the Chicago Historical Society, who delivered an address 
entitled " Provincial Pictures by Brush and Pen." Mr. 
Guild said Bostonians were always glad to welcome with 
open hand and warm heart any member of the Chicago 
Historical Society who might honor them with their com- 
pany and their assistance. 



PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 



Smibert! Blackburn! Copley! Stuart! 

It may be that somewhere — among some people — the 
sound of these magic names may fall dull and meaning- 
less, but in the old state-house of Boston — or within the 
boundaries of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecti- 
cut — nay, anywhere on the Atlantic slope from Casco Bay 
to Independence Hall at Philadelphia, the bare mention 
of those old artists calls up a luminous cloud of pictures 
most dear, most venerated, most exhilarating to the native 
American heart. 

At Smibert's name there rises upon the imagination a 
cloud of colonial governors, councilors, judges, clergymen, 
and their wives and daughters from 1728 to 1750, arrayed 
in wigs and laces, drinking healths to George II and his 
good queen Caroline, at peace with themselves and the 
world. 

Blackburn succeeds and for fifteen years with faithful 
pencil portrays the same class of peaceful, successful, and 
happy colonists. The vision of George II, Queen Caro- 
line, and the wise Walpole fades away, and then rise 
before our mind the excited and stormy political kings of 
thought. The Otiscs, the Adames, the Warrens, the Bow- 
doins, the Pittses, the Winthrops, the Dexters, the liberty 
men and women of the reign of George III, both in the 
colonies and in the mother-country, struggle into action 
from the Copley canvasses in Fancuil Hall and the Na- 
tional Gallery on Trafalgar Square, and the ancestral 
homes of American patriots. 



6 PROVIN'CIAL riCTURES. 

Then in bewildering^ 'chaos there rushes upon tlie brain 
the wild medley of Gilbert Stuart, whose bold pencil gives 
us in colors^ never excelled in ancient or modern portrai- 
ture the flesh tints and speaking features of Washington, 
Lee, St. Clair, Knox, Dearborn, Brooks, Clarkson, Coffin, 
Decatur, Gates, Mifflin, Perry, Strong, Sullivan, and other 
warriors of that great era, until we seem to hear the roar 
of artiller)- from ship and shore at Bunker Hill, and leap 
from battle to battle until the glorious consummation at 
Yorktown. 

Following them and " trailing clouds of glory as they 
go" are the illustrious founders of the Constitution, Adams, 
Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, and stopping not 
his magic pencil until another generation had settled the 
experiment of a free republican government, he left us 
the shining elqquent eyes of Fisher Ames, Samuel Dexter, 
Edward Everett, and Daniel Webster. 

From 1728, when Smibcrt here commenced his rare 
work, to 182S, when Gilbert Stuart laid down his brush, 
these four painters transferred from a transitory theatre 
the forms and features of the leaders of a marvelous 
century, and cold indeed must be the American or Ikitish 
heart that throbs not with a quicker and fuller pulse at the 
thought of their great gifts to us and the coming genera- 
tions. 



THE ADDRESS. 



i\lR. President and Members of the Bostonian Society: 

FOUR of the pictures which are exhibited to you today 
were painted in this city long before the Revokition. 
They have been absent for one hundred years. During 
most of that time they have hung in the old Brinley man- 
sion at Tyngsboro, where they were taken about 1786, b\' 
Hon. John Pitts, who was speaker of your Assembly in 
the other end of this State House in 1778. 

Mr. Pitts was married on the 1st of June, 1779, to Mary 
Tyng, the only child of Judge John Tyng, who was for 
many years a leading member of the House and Council, 
and one of the chief judges after the Revolution." He 
owned an estate of several thousand acres of land on the 
Merrimac, in Dunstable, and gave it the name of Tyngs- 
boro. A conspicuous actor in the exciting drama of the 
Revolution from 1773 to 1785, Mr. Pitts had earned the 
repose of a country life, and he took with him to that 
beautiful estate these pictures of his grandfather, John 
Pitts, the first settler, and his wife, Elizabeth Lindall, 
painted by Smibert about 1730; of his father, James 
Pitts, and of his mother, Elizabeth Bowdoin Pitts, painted 
by Blackburn in 1757; of his grandfather, James Bowdoin, 
by Joseph Badger in 1747; and of his father's grand- 
mother, Susannah Lindall, by Smibert about 1728. After 
the lapse of 100 years, Mr. Thomas Pitts of Detroit — with 
one exception the only living representative bearing his 
name known to us in the fourth generation from James 

* Diary of Rev. Ebenezer Bridge, second minister of Chelmsford: " ist 
Tune, 1779. Dined at Judge Tyngs, per invitation, and in ye afternoon 
married Hon. John Pitts and Miss Tyng, dr. of ye Judge, fee a Johannes 
gold. Hon. James Bowdoin and wife with other company there." 



8 PROVINCIAL riCTURES. 

Pitts, the councillor — has endeavored to make a colonial 
collection of the family portraits of his ancestors, and 
these oil portraits have taken up their line of march for 
that distant West which was scarcely known of men when 
the originals of these pictures were living. 

Thanks to this Society, there is no spot where the pict- 
ure of the Councillor James Pitts could so appropriately 
be exhibited. Where once stood his mansion now stands 
the Howard Athen.eum. The old lirattle-Street church, 
where he was baptized in i/io, married in 1732, and where 
he worshiped until the Revolution, has long since passed 
away. The warehouses, the stores, the markets he helped 
to erect, the white-winged vessels he and his sons sent to 
all parts of the world, no longer exist; but here stands the 
council-table at which he sat and here are the same walls 
which echoed his earnest whig sentiments when all America 
was trembling with excitement in the struggles which pre- 
ceded the birth of a great republic. 

The name of his father-in-law, James Bowdoin, whose 
picture is exhibited here for the first time, is well known 
to local antiquarians, but to the great mass of our country- 
men has been obscured by the illustrious career of his son 
James, the governor, and his grandson James, the minister 
to Spain and chief patron of Bowdoin College. 

In the sketches I am privileged to place before you to- 
day, I beg to begin, not with that grandest drama of the 
world's history, the birth of the American Republic, but 
two hundred years ago, at LaRochelle, on the sunny west- 
ern shore of Inance, and at the craggy harbor of Lyme 
Regis, on the southwestern coast of England. In those 
romantic and beautiful sea-coast towns were passed the 
early play-days of James Bowdoin, the Huguenot, and 
John Pitts, the Puritan, whose painted forms look down 
upon us from these council walls. 

Mr. Pitts was born in 1668, in those dark days when the 



JAMES BOWDOIN. 9 

awful reaction from the principles of Milton and Locke, 
Hampden and Sidney, had replaced the Stuarts on the 
throne, and Charles II was intensifying all the crimes of 
his father. 

Mr. Bowdoin was born in 1676, when Louis XIV, at 
the height of his grandeur, kept the English king and his 
ministers paid pensioners to minister to his own ambition 
and left him free to prosecute his war upon Spain, that 
great empire which had already commenced to fall to 
pieces. Bowdoin was born in that beautiful harbor which 
came into possession of England's king, Henry II., as a 
dowry of his wife Eleanor, but which had long since passed 
back into the possession of the French. His father, Pierre 
Baudouin, was, by tradition, an educated and successful 
physician. 

In 1598, at the neighboring sea-coast town of Nantes, 
under the reign of Henry IV, was promulgated that 
famous edict which pretended to secure to the Protestants 
of P'rance the freedom to worship God in their own way, 
to maintain schools and universities, and to hold civil and 
military office. P"or nearly one hundred years, despite the 
adverse genius of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Colbert, the 
Huguenots developed and grew, until on the i8th of Octo- 
ber, 1685, the corrupt and designing Louis XIV procured 
the revocation of the edict of liberty, and more than four 
hundred thousand of the best citizens of France were 
driven beyond her territory, happier far, though bereft of 
country, than the great myriad which was tortured and 
massacred at home. 

Dr. Bowdoin with his wife and four children first fled to 
Ireland and then to Casco Bay, where they as narrowly 
escaped from the tomahawk of the savages of the woods 
as they had from the swords of the savages of Louis XIV. 
The family finally settled in this city in 1690, when the 
subject of our text was in his 15th year. The recent 



10 PROVINCIAL I'UTURHS. 

accession of William and Mar\' to the throne of Gt. Britain 
had renewed, or more proper)}' it mit^ht be said, begun the 
prosperous career of that great empire on the broad ocean 
of constitutional liberty. Her Colonies shared her pros- 
perity, and young Bovvdoin, spared from religious frenzy 
in France and the fires which consumed their first home at 
Casco Bay, was enabled in fifty years to amass a fortune 
of more than ^600,000, old tenor, a fortune at that time 
quite unprecedented in America. The highest honors of 
the Province were bestowed upon him. He was overseer 
of the poor, justice, and of the quorum, and member of 
the king's council. 

Mr. Bowdoin's family life must have been particularly 
interesting. He was first married about 1706, and was 
then a supporter of the old French church and also of the 
famous Brattle- Street or Manifesto Church, organized 
about 1698. Of this marriage survived him a daughter, 
Mary Bayard, who became the mother of Mrs. Gen. 
St. Clair, and a son, William, who was a prominent citizen 
and was father of Sarah, who married her cousin, James 
Bowdoin, both of whom, though dying childless, will 
be known for untold generations by the Bowdoin boys 
as patrons of the learned college at Brunswick. She 
is also remembered by many of your citizens as the 
wife of that grand old hero of the Revolution, Henry 
Dearborn, whose portrait, by Gilbert Stuart, looks down 
on us from the south wall of this chamber. By a strange 
coincidence this rare work of art will go to our great 
Northwest with the Bowdoin and Pitts portraits, and will 
find its home in the Calumet Club of Chicago, as a gift 
from some generous members of the Commercial Club.* 

In 17 14, Mr. Bowdoin married for his second w^ife Han- 
nah Pordage, a descendant for several generations of Pil- 
grim and Puritan families. Her mother was Elizabeth 

* See Appendi.x. 



JAMKS ]](nVDOIN. II 

Lyndc, a sister of Chief-Justice Benjamin Lyndc, daughter 
of Simon Lynde and Hannah Newdigatc. Mrs. Bowdoin 
was first cousin of Chief-Justice Benjamin Lynde, who 
presided at the trial of Capt. Preston for the Boston 
massacre of 1770. The first daughter of this marriage, 
Elizabeth Bowdoin — half French, half New England — was 
born April 25, 17 17. Her father was then rich, benevo- 
lent, social, and happy, and while she is growing up ready 
to become the bride of James Pitts in her i6th year, let 
us go back to the lovely sea-coast of County Dorset, 
,_England, in 1694. 

Lyme Regis in the olden times of Merrie PLngland was 
the home of kings. It was chartered in the thirteenth 
century, and was a port of great importance in the reign 
of Edward HL, for whom it provided three ships to assist 
in the siege of Calais in 1346. 

Over this borough in 1694, during the reign of William 
and Mary, presided a mayor named Baruth Pitts. I have 
never sought to trace his genealogy. I have his original 
manuscript letter written to his son John, who was tossing 
on the Downs on board the Sca-Harsc of London, ready 
for a favorable wind to sail from Plymouth Sound to New 
England, and I know from that letter and from the kind 
of son he sent here that his patent of nobility came direct 
from the God of nature, stamped and sealed b}^ the hand 
of the infinite Father of all men. To those of you who 
are familiar with the letters of Gov. John Winthrop to his 
son, published in this city in 1864-7, by his illustrious de- 
scendant, you could easily imagine this letter to have been 
penned by the old Governor himself — the quaint purity of 
style, the absolute trusting piety of the christian, and the 
sagacious mind for business alike appear in both. But let 
the letter speak for itself: 

(Superscribed): F'or my Sonne John Pitts, aboard the Sca-horsc 
of London in Plymouth Sound. In Plymouth. 



12 rROVINCIAL riCTUKHS. 

(Endorsed): My dear Fathers letter. 

LvMK, 19II1 April, 1694. 

SoNNK John: — -I received yo'' of the i3h instant from the 
Downs, and \vc are all glad of your welfare there and hope you 
will have a fiiir wind in due time to carry yo" to yo"^ designed 
port; yo' brother or 1 will write M'^ Micholl as soon as you leave 
England; and I will do my utmost about Sontor's bills, if he be 
returned in the Virginia fleet; yo' brother hath a letter from Mr. 
Quattios with bills on Mr. Ford of London, accepted for 250"", 
the full ballance of yo' acct with which he will pay every one 
what is their due as soon as the money is received, which will be 
in about 24 days more, the bills being drawn at 60 days; I ad- 
vised him to retain 9''' of Col. James' ballance till he delivered 
Mr. Lutar's bills, which he intends to do. If you can have an 
opportunity to come from Plym" hither we shall be glad to see 
you. Whether Mr. Edwards hath ordered his goods at Plym" for 
yo" we are not certain, but Mr. Doracott (in whose custody it is) 
can acciuaint you, he having an order about it; Col. James would 
send some goods there were he sure you would stop long enough 
to take it in, but we give him no encouragement. 

If you cannot have the time to come for Lyme, our prayers 
shall be for you that God would preserve and keep you in safety 
in your voyage. God is tlie best convoy and the safest hope, who 
will not fail to preserve those that commit themsehes into his 
hands. It is good to look unto him in all cases and at all times, 
to behold his wonders in the deep waters and to fear before him, 
to pray to his name and to put our whole trust and confidence in 
him, who is good to all tliat fear him and cast their care upon 
him. Mind God every day and he will take care of you every 
day. Especially spend your time well on the Sabbath day that 
your example may encourage others to do the like, which will be 
acceptable unto God (read the 58 Isiah, 13, 14 verses to this end). 
Let your first thoughts be upon God every morning to pray to 
him, and your last thoughts every evening to commit yourself to 
hiu); this is the way to engage an omnipotent power for your 
protection. Seriously weigh these things and i)ractice them, for 



BARUTH I'lTTS. 13 

it is for your life. And as you intend to continue some time in 
New England, we desire the Lord to guide and direct you in all 
your ways and to preserve you from all evil, that in due time we 
may see each others faces with comfort. Let God's glory be your 
principal end in all your undertakings and then Clod will order all 
things for your present and future good, into whose hands we 
commit you, desiring the Lord to bless you in soule and body 
and rest, Vo"' loving father. 

Bar: Pitts. 

In 1694, only four years later than his Huguenot friend, 
John Pitts arrived and settled in Boston; and it is not 
unworthy of notice that the advent of these two young 
men destined to become such leaders in the new Province 
occurred just at a pivotal period in the w^orld's history. 

It was in this year and the very month of the year when 
John Pitts sailed from Plymouth that the Bank of England 
was chartered, and that system of banking inaugurated 
which has revolutionized the habits and customs of the 
whole civilized world, stimulating industry, manufactures, 
and commerce, until today the poorest laborer in our midst 
enjoys man}' luxuries unknown in 1694 to the royal fami- 
lies of Europe. 

It was in 1691 that the province of Massachusetts was 
chartered by William and Mary, of blessed memory. 

It was in 1690 that Locke completed his remarkable 
work on "Civil Government," which was reprinted in many 
editions in America. 

It was an era when men began to think and to say and 
to print the idea that the STATE ought to exist for the 
citizen and not exclusively for the king. 

On the 30th of September, 1696, there was recorded in 
liber 14 of Suffolk deeds a power of attorney from John 
Audlie, County Devon, Eng., to John Pitts, to take charge 
of certain property he had inherited here. It recites: 
"Now, in consideration of the trust I have in John Pitts 



14 TROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

of Lyme Regis, now resident of Boston, N. K., I make my 
friend John Pitts my attorney. I set m\' hand and seal, 
and Baruth Pitts, Mayor of the Burrough of L)'me Regis, 
hath set his seal sexto die August, 1695. John AudHe." 

The young merchant made rapid progress, for on the 
loth of September, 1697, he married P^Hzabeth Lindall, 
the daughter of James and Susannah Lindall. And here 
I call your attention to the portrait of that early dame of 
New England, painted by Smibert about 1728, at least 
two generations older than your matchless professor's 
"Dorothy O." She died in 1733, at an advanced age. 

From the marriage of John Pitts and Elizabeth Lindall 
came Elizabeth, who married Hugh Hall and whose son, 
Pitts Hall, graduated at Plarvard in 1747; Sarah, who 
married Wm. Stoddard; a son, Thomas Pitts, who gradu- 
ated at Harvard in 1727; and lastly a son, James, the 
councillor, whose portrait by Blackburn is here today. 
He was born in 17 10, and on the 15th of October was 
baptized by Dr. Benjamin Colman in the Brattle-Street 
Church. He entered Harvard in 1727, and was placed 
second in rank in a class of thirty-four. In John Ouincy 
Adams' "Life of John Adams," page 14, he says: 

"The distinction of ranks at Harvard University was 
observed with such punctilious nicety that, in the arrange- 
ment of every class, precedence was assigned to every 
individual according to the dignity of his birth, or to the 
rank of his parents. This custom continued until the class 
which entered in 1769, when the substitution of the alpha- 
betical order in the names and places of the members of 
each class may be considered as a pregnant indication of 
the republican principles which were rising to an ascen- 
dency over those which had prevailed during the colonial 
state of the country." 

The only predecessor of James Pitts in the class of 1731 
was Judge Russell, and he was followed by a Sparhawk, a 



JAMES PITTS. \y 

Gookin, a Sewall, and a Gushing'. In the class of 1745^ 
numbering t\vent}--four, his brother-in-law James Bowdoin 
also ranked second, his father having been for many years 
one of the king's council. Among Mr. Pitts' college-mates 
were Gov. Jonathan Belcher, Chief-Justice Peter Oliver, 
Prof John Winthrop — the last his warm co-patriot in the 
council for many years.* 

Just before James Pitts graduated, his father died, March 
31, 173 1, leaving him, in his twenty-first year, sole heir to 
a fortune and an established business. On the 26th of 
October, 1732, he married Elizabeth Bowdoin, in her six- 
teenth year, the beautiful daughter of the councillor, James 
Bowdoin, and Hannah Pordage. Bowdoin was the wealthi- 
est man in New England at that time, and his connection 
must have been of great advantage to Mr. Pitts, financially 
and socially. In March, 1733, Mr. Pitts became sole exec- 
utor and principal legatee of his grandmother Susannah, 
wife of James Lindall and afterward wife of John Jacobs, 
who left a large estate. September 8, 1747, Mr. Bowdoin 
died, leaving a will, appointing James Pitts, James Bow- 
doin, and Thomas Flucker his executors. 

On the 31st of May, 1757, these three executors, all of 
whom were then or shortly afterward members of the 
council, filed their final report with the Hon. Thomas 
Hutchinson, judge of probate for the County of Suffolk. 
The report bears the signature of James Bowdoin, James 
Pitts, and Thomas Flucker in three different places, and 
loses no interest from the fact tliat so soon thereafter the 
two James were among the leaders of the patriot cause, 
while their brother-in-law Flucker, as secretary of the 
province, and Hutchinson, as governor, were conspicuous 
on the side of George III. In the name of Mr. Wm. 
Bridge Brinley, a descendant of both Councillors Bowdoin 

* In some of the following pages the author has drawn freely upon his- 
own printed but not published memorial of James Titts and his sons. 



l6 PROVINCIAI. PICTURES. 

and Pitts, I have the pleasure of giving }-ou tliis remarka- 
ble executors' report, which will repay a careful examina- 
tion. It contains fifty pages of entries, amounting to over 
i^6oo,ooo old tenor, or ;^82,875 sterling — about ;^30,ooo 
sterling more than Gov. John Hancock inherited from his 
uncle Thomas. It begins with a division of ;i^74,3i9 of 
personal property, etc. James Bowdoin (the future gov- 
ernor) is first charged with ^^"5166 for household furniture, 
wearing apparel, and three negroes; ^1238 for four wheel- 
chaise, etc.; ^^1388 for 504 oz. of silver-plate. 

\Vm. Bowdoin is charged ^^^1828 for coach, etc., coined 
silver, etc.; ;^I388 for 504 oz. of plate. 

James Pitts and Thomas Flucker are each charged ;^694 
for 252 oz. of silver-plate, and Mary Bayard's children are 
charged with the same amount. Then ^^"37,000 worth of 
real estate in the County of Sufiblk are divided by parti- 
tion deed. 

In the list of i^6oo,ooo of assets are many curious items, 
for example: Nov. 4, 1747, cash found in the pocket of 
J. B., £2. Ditto in the escritoire and chest, ^^4635. 16.4. 
The great mass of assets are of bonds and mortgages. 
There are several hundred of those by men in all parts of 
the province, varying from ^"lO to ;^i 5,000, all admitting 
an indebtedness in "lawful silver money of the Province of 
the Massachusetts Bay in New luigland," conditioned for 
the payment "of so many ounces of coined silver of ster- 
ling alloy, or of so many ounces of coined standard gold, 
both Troy weight." Among the assets are the rents of 
J^sths of Long Wharf, owned by him. 

The credit side of the account shows many items of 
interest touching the customs of the time, for instance: 
the funeral expenses amount to over ^,"5000, for the coffin 
and coffin furniture, for rings, plain and stone, for coaches, 
for wigs, for hats, for shoes, attendance, etc. Among the 
items are legacies for Andrew Lcmercier, pastor of the 



BRATTLE- STREET CHURCH. 1 7 

French Church, and Dr. Cooper, of Brattle-Street Ciiurch, 
and Rev. Mr. Tuttle, minister of Bedford; for education of 
George LesHe at college; to John Osborne for balance of 
account with the committee of war; to Dr. \Vm. liuUfinch, 
for medical services; and to Benjamin Pratt, Wm. Stor}', 
James Otis, and James Otis, Jr., for legal services; to Jacob 
Wendell,* overseer of the poor of Boston, and to the poor 
of the French Church; and to Joseph Badger, for drawing 
the picture which we have here today. 

Mr. Bowdoin died one week later than the Rev. Dr. Ben- 
jamin Colman, the originator of the Brattle-Street Church, 
and who was his pastor for fifty }-ears.-f- 

The first steps toward organizing this celebrated church 
was in 1697, and in the words of President Ouincy (His- 
tory of Harvard Univer., 1-132) was the first fruit of that 
religious liberty which the charter of Wm. and Mary intro- 
duced into Massachusetts. Brattle Close was deeded to 
the new society in 1698, and the new meeting-house 
erected in 1699. James Bowdoin and John Pitts were 
among the first members of this manifesto church, and 
continued so the balance of their lives. I have here the 
original receipt from Thomas Brattle to John Pitts fori^i5 
for pew No. 22 in this church, dated April 30, 1700. 

It is curious to notice that when the first church was 
destroyed, and a new one erected in 1772, the sons of the 
first settlers were among the donors; Gov. Bowdoin giving 
;^200 and James Pitts ^100. 

* Cireat-grandfather of Prof. Holmes. 

t "Rev. Dr. Coleman's funeral, Sept. 2, 1747. A vast procession at ye 
funeral; 'twas observd yt 66 couple, being ye males of ye Chh. and ye Col- 
league Pastor in deep mourns before ye corps — Six Senior Pastors. Pall- 
bearers with hat-bands down; 100 couple of mourners and men — among ye 
latter ye Council — a grt no. of Ministers, 4 Episcopal, among wc Mr. 
Hooper, newly from England; 46 couple of women; 4 coaches, in ye first 
of wc ye Governor; 8 4-wheel chaises and 7 common." — Rev. E. Parkman's 
MSS. Diary, 14 X.-E. Gen. Reg., 214. 
2 



l8 rkOVIXCIAL PICTURKS. 

In addition to his private business and the settlement of 
the estates of his father and .^grandmother, the management 
of the estate of James Bowdoin brought upon Mr. Pitts 
an immense labor. Mr. l^owdoin was chief member of the 
Kennebec Compan)', who owned many thousand acres of 
land on the Kennebec River, which, with its fall of looo 
feet in 150 miles, presented a grand field for improvement. 
At that time, under George II, the colonies were at peace 
with luigland, and the warmest cordiality existed between 
them. The crafty Walpole and the good queen, Caroline, 
always carried out the doctrine of expediency and keeping 
the nation at peace. The queen died in 1737, and Walpole 
resigned in 1742. 

The merchants of Boston had for years carried on a 
profitable trade with foreign nations, and had grown 
wealthy and Hved in luxury and ease. Boston was then 
the largest and finest city in America, and larger and 
better built than any city in England, except London. 
They were in constant communication with the mother 
country, and read the books then coming out by the old 
English and Scotch worthies. Mr. John Oldmixon, of 
England, published in 1741 a second edition of his "Brit- 
ish Empire in America," in which he says: 

" Conversation in Boston is as polite as in most of the 
cities and towns in England, many of their merchants 
having traded in Europe, and those that stayed at home 
having the advantage of society with travellers ; so that a 
gentleman from London would almost think himself at 
home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, 
their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress, and 
conversation, which, perhaps, is as splendid and showy as 
that of the most considerable tradesman in London. Upon 
the whole, Boston is the most flourishing town for trade 
and commerce in the English America. Near 600 sail of 
ships have been laden here in a year for I^uropc and the 



* THE PITTS HOME IN 1 753. 1 9 

British Plantations. The goodness of the pavement may 
compare with most in London." 

They were deeply imbued with the theories and teach- 
ings of government of Milton, Sidney, Hampden, Pym, 
and Locke. 

It will require little imagination to fill up a lovely pict- 
ure of the Pitts home from 1732 to 1760. Youth, health, 
wealth, success, college acquaintances, social life of the 
best and purest kind, and characters of inflexible virtue 
and independence, as exhibited in their future public life, 
must have combined to make an ideal home. 

In 1753, their oldest son, John, born in 1738, entered 
Harvard, and his father at forty-three and his mother at 
thirty-six kept alive the freshness of life that needed not, 
in their case, any renewal. Among his college-mates were 
John Adams, John Hancock, John Wentworth, David 
Sevvall, S. H. Parsons, and Jonathan Trumbull. What a 
galaxy of stars! How Grandmother Bowdoin Pitts, only 
thirty-six years old when her boy was a freshman, and 
only forty when he was a graduate, must have enjoyed the 
college days of those boys! This beautiful portrait of her 
by Blackburn was painted in 1757, the year her son John 
graduated. 

All of the sons entered into business with their father. 
They are all spoken of as merchants, engaged in building 
and buying ships and using them in foreign trade with the 
Bermudas and other places. '-^ James Pitts was for many 
years treasurer of the Society for Propagating Christian 
Knowledge among the Indians. I have a copy of a bond 
for ^2000 by John Kneeland and Nathaniel Gary to him 

* There is an interesting account of the IJermudas in "Harper's Magazine,"' 
December, 1873, P^g^ 4'^4> «i"'^^ ^ beautiful picture of Pitts Bay. It says 
that during our Revolution their sympathies were warmly enlisted in favor 
of the colonies and states; that a large amount of gunpowder disappeared 
mysteriously from there in 1775, two months after the battle of IJunker HilL 
Probably the Pitts family could have exjilained its change of base. 



20 PROVINCIAL riCTURES. 

as such treasurer, in 1773, conditioned for the pa)-nient to 
him of one-third of the whole estate of Richard Mart\'n, 
under his will, for the use of that society. 

James Pitts' residence for many years was on the spot 
where the Howard Athencum now stands. It is said by 
Drake & Bridgman that Mr. Pitts' Boston home was a 
favorite meeting-place for the patriotic clubs. He and all 
his boys were Sons of J^iberty. John Adams, in his diary, 
February 15, 1771, speaks of "going to Mr. Pitts' to meet 
the Kennebec Company— Bowdoin, Gardiner, Hallowell, 
and Pitts.* There I shall hear philosophy and politics in 
perfection from H.; high-flying, high church, high State 
from G.; sedate, cool moderation from l^owdoin; AND 
WARM, HONEST, FRANK WlIKlGLSM FROM PiTTS." 

January 10, 1771, he says: "Dined at John Erving's with 
Gray, Pitts, Hancock, Adams [Samuel], Townscnd, and 
others." 

June 30, 1772, he says: "It has been ni}- fate to be 
acquainted, in the way of my business, with a number of 
very rich men — Gardiner, Bowdoin, Pitts, Hancock, Rowe, 
Lee, Sargent, Hooper, and Doane. There is not (Mie of 
those who derives more pleasure from his property than I 
do from mine; my little farm, and stock, and cash, afford 
me as much satisfaction as all their immense tracts, exten- 
sive navigation, sumptuous buildings, their vast sums at 
interest, and stocks in trade jdeld to them." 

At the hospitable board of James Pitts must often have 
been seen the form of Samuel Adams. There was through 
all their lives the most cordial friendship between the Pitts 
and that old hero, and among the subscribers to pay his 
debts are the names of Hon, James Pitts and Hon. James 
Bowdoin, James Pitts, Jr., Richard Dana, Samuel Dexter, 
Dr. Joseph Warren, John Erving, and John Hancock. 

* Both Gardiner and Ilallowell belonged to the government party and 
were proscribed and banished in 177S. 



THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL. 21 

Mr. Pitts, after filling many inferior office.s, such as over- 
seer of the poor, justice of the peace, visitor of schools, etc., 
was elected to the highest in the gift of the people on the 
28th of May, 1766, that of a member of the council. 
Under the charter of the Massachusetts Colony, the gov- 
ernor was appointed by the British king, and the people 
elected a house of representatives — only men of property 
and, up to 1764, only members of some christian church 
could vote; so that three-quarters of the community was 
excluded, and the better elements of society controlled 
these elections. This annual election was an important 
day in old Boston. The church members and property 
owners met in a body, and, before voting, had divine ser- 
vice and a sermon from some minister selected by the 
selectmen of Boston, a body of seven men, to whom the 
affairs of the city were committed. At the annual meet- 
ing in May, 1775, after the king and parliament had legis- 
lated out of office the old council and judges of the colony, 
Samuel Langdon, the president of Harvard University, 
preached the annual sermon from the text: "And I will 
restore the judges as at the first, and thy councilors as at the 
beginning; afterward thou shalt be called the city of right- 
eous, the faithful city." The house of representatives, 
elected directly by the people, sitting with the last council, 
elected a new council, which was limited to twenty-eight, 
and these two houses and the governor constituted the 
government for the colony as a unit, the governor having 
the right to veto or negative the election of any councilor. 
These twenty-eight councilors were to the State what the 
United States senate is to the United States, or the house 
of lords is to Great Britain. 

From May, 1634, to August, 1774, these two houses sat 
apart, and were coordinate and coequal branches, the 
assent of both being necessary to make a law. 

To this high position in the State, Mr. Pitts and his 



22 rROVIN'CIAL PICTURES. 

brothcrs-in-lau" Bowdoin and Thomas Mucker were, for 
many years, annually elected by the house of representa- 
tives and the outijoing council, and for several years it 
chanced that one of the twenty-eight was Judge Gamaliel 
Bradford,* grandfather to Mrs. Samuel Pitts. 

The stamp act which had excited the people of New 
England almost to frenzy, and had nearly brought on a 
revolution in fact, as it did in spirit, was repealed by the 
king and parliament on the i8th of March, 1766. The 
intelligence reached Boston on the i6th of May, and was 
received with great manifestations of joy and a celebration. 
At the annual election on the 6th of Ma>', Samuel Adams, 
Thomas Gushing, James Otis, and John Hancock were 
chosen representatives for l^oston. This was the opening 
of the political career of the famous John Hancock, 
Samuel Adams, and Joseph Hawley,"f" and in the same 
general court began the political official career of the 
patriot, James Pitts. The general court, filled with the 
spirit of liberty, dropped the crown officers, five Tories 

* Hon. ("lamaliel Bradford was a great-grandson of William I!., second 
governor of Plymouth Colony. He shared largely in all the duties of the 
public offices in that town. He was a friend of education, and did much 
toward the maintenance and improvement of the public schools. He for 
several years represented the tt)wn in the legislature, and during the trying 
period from 1764 to 1770, was a member of the executive council. He was 
for many years judge of the county court. He also held command of the 
company of militia in his native town, and, about 1750, was raised to the 
command of the regiment with the rank of colonel. In his declining years, 
he witnessed with patriotic ardor the uprising of the sons of liberty, and, 
though his heart was with them, he was unable by active exertion to assist 
in the crowning glories of true-born freemen. He died in Duxbury, April 
24, 1778, having nearly reached his seventy-fourth year. (Winsor's Hist, of 
Duxbury, page 148.) 

t Wm. Tudor expressed the public opinion of Maj. Hawley in this all- 
comprehensive eulogy (p. 260): 

"He was a patriot without personal animosities; an orator without vanity; 
a lawyer without chicanery; a gentleman without ostentation; a statesman 
without duplicity; and a christian without bigotry." 



JAMES PITTS' FIRST COUNCIL MEETING. 23 

from the list of councilors, and in their place elected James 
Pitts, Samuel Dexter, and others. 

In his diary for that day (II., 195), John Adams ex- 
claimed: "What a chancre! This day seems to be the 
literal accomplishment of a prophec)' of Mr. Otis two or 
three winters ago. ' The day is hastening on with large 
strides when a dirty witless rabble shall go down with 
deserved infamy to all posterity!' Thus the triumph of 
Otis and his party are complete." On the next day, Gov. 
Bernard negatived Mr. Dexter's election, but allowed Mr. 
Pitts to stand. He first took his seat in this chamber on 
the 2d of June, 1/66, and from that day on until the last 
meeting, in June, 1774, no member was so regular in his 
attendance as he.* 

On the 7th of June, 1766, the council adopted an elo- 
quent address of congratulation to Gov. Bernard, and it 
was presented by Messrs. Brattle, Gamaliel Bradford, 
James Pitts, Thomas Flucker.-f- and Powell. 

On the 27th of October, 1768, an address was signed by 

* Record of his first meeting : " Province of the Massachusetts Bay. 

"At a Council held at the Council Chamber in Boston upon Monday, the 
2d day of June, 1766; sitting the General Court. 

"Present: His Excellency, Francis Bernard, Esq., Governor; Andrew Bel- 
cher, James Bowdoin, John Bradbury, Gamaliel Bradford, Wm. Brattle, 
John Chandler, Samuel Danforth, John Erving, Thomas Flucker, Harrison 
Gray, John Hill, Thomas Hubbard, Benjamin Lincoln, Timothy Paine, 
Tames Pitts, Jeremiah Powell, Nathaniel Ropes, Isaac Royal, James Russell, 
Royall Tyler. 

Mr. Pitts had the company of both of his brothers-in-law, Bowdoin and 
Flucker, and Mr. Bowdoin had the company also of his father-in-law, John 
Erving. According to Sabine less than half of these councilors embraced 
the patriot cause. 

t Thomas Flucker married Judith Bowdoin in 1744, the only full sister 
of Mrs. Pitts. He was, in 1774, secretary of the province and a mandamus 
councilor— sided with the loyalists, went to London and died there in 1783. 
His daughter Lucy married Maj.-Gen. Henry Knox, who was secretary of 
war from 1 785 to 1 795. Drake says : " She was a lady who, after the Revo- 
lution, became a principal ornament of the first circle of .\merica. " 



24 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

the council to Gen. Gage, reminding him that the people 
had been misrepresented; that the disorders in the town 
had been greatly magnified, and spoke of his candor, gen- 
erosity, and justice as a safeguard to counteract the mis- 
representations which had been made by the enemies of 
the town. They endeavored to convince him that there 
was no occasion for so great a number of troops in the 
place, and hoped he would have them removed to the 
castle. This was signed, among others, by James Pitts, 
Samuel De.xter, James Bowdoin, and Gamaliel Bradford. 

Gen. Gage thanked them for the honor done him, but 
declined to remove the troops, which led to constant 
troubles with the people, and in 1769 the council and 
house refused to do any public business so long as the 
troops were there, stationed within reach of their halls, 
upon which Gov. Bernard adjourned them to meet at 
Cambridge; and then they refused to proceed to business 
at Cambridge, because their removal was illegal; but in 
June they proceeded to business there under protest, and 
on the 27th they petitioned the king for his removal- 
From thence till the final rupture with Ii^ngland, Mr. Pitts 
was annually elected to the council, and sat as a law- 
maker and executive officer in the halls of Harvard Uni- 
versity, where he had for four years been a pupil. 

More literally true, perhaps, than was intended were the 
words of the orator, John Ouincy Adams, to the school- 
boys of Boston, in Faneuil Hall in 1826, when he said- 
" It was by the midnight lamps of Harvard Hall that were 
" conceived and matured, as it was within these hallowed 
"walls that were first resounded the accents of that Inde- 
" pendcnce which is now canonized in the memory of those 
"by whom it was proclaimed." 

Robert C. Winthrop, in his life of Bowdoin, says: "It 
would not be easy to overstate the importance to the 
ultimate success of American liberty and independence, of 



rKOVIXCIAI, COUNCIL. 25 

the course pursued by the council and house of repre- 
sentatives of Massachusetts, during the greater part of this 
period — a controversy, beginning as early as 1757, and 
which lasted till the final independence. Indeed, if any 
one would fully understand the rise and progress of Revo- 
lutionary principles on this continent; if he would under- 
stand the arbitrary and tyrannical doctrines which were 
asserted by the British ministry, and the prompt resistance 
and powerful refutation which they met at the hands of 
our New-England patriots, he must read what are called 
The Massachusetts State Papers, containing the messages 
of the governor to the legislature, and the answers of the 
two branches of the legislature to the governor. He will 
find here almost all the great principles and questions of 
that momentous controversy; — ^Trial by Jur}-, Regulation 
of Trade, Taxation without Representation, the Stamp 
Act, the Tea Tax, and the rest, stated and argued with 
unsurpassed ability and spirit." Daniel Webster, in his 
oration at Bunker Hill, speaks of these State papers with 
equal praise, as did Chatham and Burke, in England. 
Gov. Hutchinson says that Bowdoin, as chairman of the 
committee in the council, was without a rival, and, being 
united in principles with the leading men in the house, 
measures were concerted between him and them, and from 
this time the council, in scarcely any instance, disagreed 
with the house. 

During the ten years of continual warfare between the 
king and his ministers, and governors and officers, on the 
one side, and the council and assembly of Massachusetts. 
and the people, on the other side, James Pitts was inflexi- 
bly on the side of the people and liberty, and against the 
royal prerogative. This battle was peculiarly hard in the 
council, for there the king had a stronger party than in the 
house. The town meetings and the house of representa- 
tives were always for American liberty and against every 



26 PROVIN'CIAL riCTURES. 

usurpation of the crown; but the governor and lieutenant- 
governor were appointed directly by the crown, and the 
governor had a right to veto or negative the election of a 
councilor — a right which he exercised nearly every year, 
and the councilors, being generally men of age and wealth 
or rank, were natural!}- conservative. 

Bernard and Hutchinson contended that the council was 
peculiarly intended to assist the crown, and all the influ- 
ences of royal power tended to incline the council to 
uphold the government, but Mr. Pitts was always on the 
side of the people of Massachusetts. 

A most notable instance of this occurred at the time 
when Samuel Adams and a committee of citizens demanded 
from Gov. Hutchinson the removal of the troops from 
Boston in 1770. The military troops stationed at I^oston 
were a continual fret to the people. Horse-racing on the 
common by the soldiers on Sunda)-, and military parades 
in the street, grated on the feelings of a church-going peo- 
ple; personal quarrels and brawls were continually taking 
place, and finally the massacre on King Street threw the 
people into a ferment of passion. At a town meeting. 
Samuel Adams and a large committee were appointed to 
wait on Gov. Hutchinson and the council, and demand the 
removal of the troops. "The committee (Frothingham's 
Warren, p. 143) about 4 o'clock repaired to the council- 
chamber. It was a room respectable in size, and not with- 
out ornament or historic memorials. On its walls were 
representations of the two elements, now in conflict, of the 
absolutism that was passing away, in full-length portraits 
of Charles H and James H, robed in the royal ermine, 
and of a republicanism that had grown robust and self- 
reliant, in the heads of Endicott, and Winthrop, and Brad- 
street, and Belcher. Around a table were seated the lieu- 
tenant-governor and the members of the council, with the 
military officers; the scrupulous and sumptuous costumes 
of civilians in authority — gold and sih-er lace, scarlet 



SAMUEL DKXTER. 2/ 

cloaks and large wigs, mingling with the brilliant uniforms 
of the British army and navy. Into such imposing pres- 
ence was now ushered the plainly-attired committee of the 
town. At this time, the governor, a portion of the coun- 
cil, tiie military officers, the secretary of the province, and 
other officials in the town house, were sternly resolved to 
refuse compliance with the demand of the people. Adams 
remarked at length on the illegality of quartering troops 
on the inhabitants in times of peace, and without the con- 
sent of the legislature; adverted with warmth to the late 
tragedy; painted the misery in which the town would be 
involved if the troops were suffered to remain; and urged 
the necessity of an immediate compliance with the vote of 
the people. The governor, in a brief reply, defended both 
the legality and necessity of the troops, and asserted that 
they were not subject to his authority. Adams again rose, 
and attention was riveted on him as he paused, and gave a 
searching look at Hutchinson." The famous picture by 
Copley, in Faneuil Hall, represents Adams as he appeared 
at this moment. Adams made another impassioned appeal 
and the committee retired. Then came the controversy 
between the governor. Col. Dalrymple. and the officers and 
crown officials, and many members of the council, on the 
one side, and Messrs. Royal Tyler, James Pitts, and Samuel 
Dexter* on the other.-f- We have it, in Gov. Hutchinson's 

* Samuel Dexter, b. 1726, d. 1810, was son of Rev. Sxmuel D., b. 1 700, 
d. 1755, and Catherine Mears b. 1701, died 1797. Rev. Samuel D. was son 
of John D. of Maiden, and Winnifred Sprague. Samuel, the councilor, was 
a merchant of Boston, married to Hannah Sigourney. He spent the greater 
part of his life in retirement, in literary, social, and charitable work, and 
founded the Lectureship for Biblical Criticism at Harvard. He was an active 
member of the council from 1767 to 1774, and of all the provincial congresses 
of Massachusetts, and of most of the important committees. His greatest 
gift to the world was his son Samuel, b. 1761, d. 1816, of whom John Adams 
said in a letter to Vanderkemp, May 26, 1816: "I have lost the ablest friend 
I had on earth in Mr. Dexter." 

t As the council proceedings have never been printed, I insert them here 



28 I'ROVIXCIAL PICTURES. 

own letter of March i8, 1770, to Sir Francis l^crnard: "If 
the council would have joined me and encouraged the peo- 
ple to wait until there could be an order from Gen. Gage, 
they might have been appeased ; but instead of that, the 
major part of them encouraged them in their demand, and, 
upon the representations made of the state of the people 

in full: At a Council hekl at tlie Council Cliamber, u[)on Thursday, the 6th 
day of March, 1770. 

Present: Ilis Honor, Thomas Hutchinson, Esqr. , Lieut. -Governor Sam'l 
Danforth, Harrison Cray, Royall Tyler, John Krving, Esqre. , James Russell, 
Esqre., James Pitts, Esqre., Thos. Hubbard, Samuel Dexter. 

The Town having been put into great disorder and confusion the last even- 
ing, by means of the King's Troops firing upon the Inhabitants, whereby three 
or four of them have been killed and divers others wounded. His Honor the 
Licutenant-Ciovernor ordered a Council to be notified. . The Council being 
met, His Honor opened to them the occasion; whereupon they advised him 
to send notice to Lieut. -Colonel Ualrymple, the Commanding Officer of the 
Troops, and to Lieut. -Colonel Carr of the 29th, that the Lieutenant-Governor 
and Council were now assembled on this unhappy occasion, and would be 
glad they would attend in Council while the matter was under discussion, and 
afford them such lights as were in their power respecting the affair under con- 
sideration. The Commanding Officers of the two Regiments attended accord- 
ingly, when in their presence divers Gentlemen of the Council informed His 
Honor, the Lieutenant-Governor, that the people of this and some of the 
neighbouring Towns were so exasperated and incensed on account of the in- 
human and barbarous destruction of a number of the Inhabitants by the Troops, 
that they apprehended imminent danger of further bloodshed by the Troops, 
unless the Troops were forthwith removed from the body of the Town, which 
in their opinion was the only methotl to prevent it. 

While these matters were under debate in Council, a Committee from the 
Town of Boston then assembled in Town Meeting, waited on His Honor the 
Lieutenant-Governor, most fervently praying that his power and influence may 
be exerted for the immediate removal of the Troops, as nothing less could 
rationally be expected to restore the peace of the Town, and prevent blood 
and carnage. 

No question was put to the Council, but the several Gentlemen of the Coun- 
cil present expressed their sense of the necessity of the immediate removal of 
the Troops from the Town; and after they had conferred with Colo. Dalrym- 
ple and Colo. Carr upon the subject. His Honor gave the following answer to 
the Committee of the Town, the same having been first read to the Council, 



REMOVAL OF TROOPS. 29 

by Tyler, backed by S , Pitts, and Dexter, Col. Dal- 

rymple told them he would remove the t\vent\'-ninth regi- 
ment till he could hear from the general. I wished to have 
been clear of the council in the afternoon, but it was not 
possible." 

The result was the removal of the troops from Boston 

"Gentlemen: — I am extremely sorry for the unhappy difference between 
"the Inhabitants and the Troops, and especially for the action of the last even- 
"ing, and I have exerted myself upon the occasion, that a due inquiry be 
"made and that the law may have its course. I have in Council consulted 
" with the Commanding Officers of the two Regiments which are in the Town; 
"they have their orders from the General at New York; it is not in my power 
"to countermand his orders. The Council have desired that the Regiments 
"may be removed to the Castle. From the particular concern which the 29th 
"Regiment has had in these differences, Colo. Dalrymple, who is the Com- 
"manding Officer of the Troops, has signified to me that that Regiment shall 
"be placed in the Barracks at the Castle, until he can send to the General and 
"receive his further orders concerning both the Regiments; and he has given 
"me assurance that the Main Guard shall be removed, and the 14th Regiment 
"shall be so disposed and laid under such restraint that all future differences 
"may be prevented." 

The Council was then adjourned to the afternoon, and being met. His 
Honor received a second Message from the Town by a Committee appointed 
for the purpose, in the following words, viz. : 

"Voted, that a Committee be appointed to wait on His Honor the Lieu- 
"tenant-Clovernorand acquaint him that it is the opinion of this Meeting, con- 
"sisting of near three thousand People, that His Honor's reply is by no means 
"satisfactory, and that nothing will satisfy the Town less than a total and im- 
" mediate removal of the Troops." 

His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor laid before the Board the foregoing 
Messao-e of the Town, presented to him this afternoon, and then addressed 
them as follows, c'iz.: 

"Gentlemen ok the Council: — I lay before you a Vote of the Town 
"of Boston which I have just now received from them, and I now ask your 
"advice what you judge necessary to be done upon it." 

The Council thereupon expressed themselves to be unanimously of Opinion 
that it was absolutely necessary for His Majesty's service, the good order of 
the Town, and the peace of the Province, that the Troops should be immedi- 
ately removed out of the Town of lioston, and thereupon advised His Honor 
to communicate this advice of the Council to Colo. Dalrymple, and to pray 
that he would order the Troops down to Castle William. 



30 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

to Castle William, and, without detracting from the triunipli 
of Samuel Adams and his committee, it is but just to give 
some unqualified praise for that great triumph to Royal 
Tyler, James Pitts, and Samuel Dexter, who had a much 
harder contest than did Adams. He was the spokesman 
of thousands of incensed and most of them irresponsible 
citizens; while Tyler, Pitts, and Dexter had to fight their 
own class, as well as the army officers, the governor and 

The following is the First Message from the Town of Boston referred to in 
the foregoing proceedings of Council, Z'iz.: 

"At a Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston at Faneuil Hail, 
"March 6th, 1770. 

"Voted, that it is the unanimous opinion of this Meeting that the Inhahi- 
"tants and Soldiery can no longer dwell together in safety; that nothing can 
"rationally be expected to restore the peace of the Town and prevent Blood 
"and Carnage but the immediate removal of the Troops, and that Thomas 
"Cushing, John Hancock, Joshua Ilenshaw, Samuel Adams, W. Henderson 
"Inches, Samuel Pemberton. Dr. Benjamin Church, John Ruddock, William 
" Phillips, Ezekiel Goldthwait, Benjn. Austin, .Samuel Austin, William Moli- 
"neux, Jonathan Mason, Joseph Jackson, be a Committee to wait upon His 
"Honor the Lieutenant-Clovernor, in the name of the Inhabitants, and most 
"fervently pray His Honor that his power and influence may be exerted for 
"their instant removal." 

N.B. — Lieutenant-Colo. Dalrymple of the 14th Regiment, Lieut. -Colo. Carr 
of the 29th, and Capt. Caldwell of His Majesty's Ship, Rose, were present in 
Council during the greater part of the forenoon and the whole of the after- 
noon, while the foregoing proceedings were had in Council. 

Advised and Consented that a Warrant be made out to the Treasurer to 
pay unto the Selectmen of the Town of Boston the sum of Three Hundred 
and seventy- four Pounds ten shillings and nine pence one farthing, to dis- 
charge their account for boarding and supporting sundry indigent Persons in 
Boston Almshouse from September ist, 1769, to March ist, 1770, they not 
being Inhabitants of any Town in the Province. 

Advised and Consented that a Warrant be made out to the Treasurer to 
pay unto Paul Farmer the sum of Twenty-Nine Pounds eight shillings, to dis- 
charge his account as Keeper of lioston Almshouse, for extraordinary care and 
trouble of the above persons the same time. 

Advised and Consented that a Warrant be made out to the Treasurer to 
pay unto Thomas Rand the sum of seven Pounds eight shillings, to discharge 
his account for going Express to Martha's Vineyard in quest of a Pirate, horse- 
hire, &c. — Boston Records, Vol. 16, pp. 454-461. 



SURRENDER OF CASTLE WILLIAM. 3 I 

secretary, and the silent influence of George III and his 
almost omnipotent parliament and ministry. In 1S17, 
John Adams wrote that this scene deserved to be painted 
as much as the surrender of Burgoyne. 

The patriots considered this a great civic triumph, and 
the British government was angry. luicomiums from 
lovers of liberty were copied into the Boston papers like 
these: 

Your Bostonians shine with renewed lustre. 

So much wisdom and virtue as hath been conspicuous in Boston 
will not go unrewarded. 

The noble conduct of the representatives, selectmen, and prin- 
cipal merchants of Boston in defending and supporting the rights 
of America, and the British Constitution can not fail to excite 
love and gratitude in the heart of every worthy person in the 
British Empire. They discover a dignity of soul worthy the human 
mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits the applause of 
all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in the 
bright records of fame to the latest ages, and unborn millions 
will rise up and call them blessed. 

In September, 1770, when Hutchinson gave up the com- 
mand of the Castle William to C«il. Ualrymple by com- 
mand of the king, thus expressly violating the charter, 
which provided that the castle and forts .should be in com- 
mand of the governor, he called the council together to in- 
form them secretly that he was about soon to do so. He 
says: "They were all struck when they heard the order. 
Pitts said perhaps it was executed already. I made no 
reply." The council made an effort to obtain an authentic 
copy of the king's order, in order to vindicate their charter 
rights, but in vain. The council then prepared a long and 
able report, together with a full statement of the seizure of 
the castle, and other infringements on the public liberties. 

This slight incident, Mr. Pitts being the only member 
mentioned by Gov. Hutchinson, shows that he was alive 



32 PROVINXIAL PICTURES. 

to tlie encroachments of the crown, and quick to oppose 
and resist thejn. (See Wells' Life of S. Adams, Vol. I, 
P- 356.) 

An examination of the Massachusetts Records will show- 
Mr. Pitts pursuing the same line of action through all the 
troubles of the Revolution to the time of his death in 
1776, working in perfect harmony with Bowdoin and 
Dexter and W'inthrop, though sometimes without them, 
for they were sometimes kept out of the council b\- the 
veto of the governor. 

The mere fact of being annually elected by the house 
and the old council through all those times which tried 
men's souls is ample evidence of the estimation in which 
he was held by Boston; but there is a special indorsement 
of him which bears the name of one second only to Wash- 
ington in the firmament of Western glory, Benjamin 
Franklin. Gov. Hutchinson had pretended to send letters 
to iMigland advocating the liberties of Americans, and had 
sent other letters, privately, quite opposed to them and in 
favor of abridging those liberties. These letters had been 
discovered by Sir John Temple," who married Gov. Bow- 
doin's daughter, and communicated to Franklin in a wax- 
that precluded him from making public use of them ; but 
to show the patriots what dangers they must know of and 
battle against, Franklin sent these letters to Thomas Gush- 
ing, the speaker of the house, w-ith a letter, in the earl}- 

* John Temple, born at East IJoston, 1731; married Elizabeth IJowdoin, 
only daughter of Gov. James Howdoin, 1767. He was an ardent ]iatriot, 
and, after the war, on the death of Sir Ricliard Temple, inherited the 'J'emple 
title in England, and became eighth baronet. lie was son of Robert Temple 
of Ten Hills, and Mehitable Nelson. (Xew-Eng. Reg., Vol. X, p. 78.) He 
died in New York, 1793, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard. In H<ir/>e)-^s 
Magazine, Vol. LHI, p. 874, there is a copy of his memorial tablet in Trinity 
Chapel. His eldest son became Sir Grenville Temple, ninth baronet. Ilis 
oldest daughter, Elizabeth Howdoin Temple, married Thomas Lindall Win- 
throp, and their youngest child is Robert C. Winthrop. For a description of 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 33 

part of 1/73, a copy of which I find in John Adams, Vol. 

I, p. 647 : 

London, 177-. 

Sir: — I embrace this opi)ortunity to actjuaint you that there is 
lately fallen into my hands part of a correspondence that I have 
reason to believe laid the foundation of most if not all our present 
grievances. I am not at liberty to tell through what channel I 
received it, but I am allowed to let it be seen by some men of 
worth in the province for their satisfaction. I wish 1 was at 
liberty to make the letters public, but as I am not, I can allow 
them to be seen by yourself, by Messrs. Bowdoin & Pitts, of the 
Council, and Dr. Chauncy, Cooper, and Winthrop, etc. 

What a distinction! to be trusted and honored by Ben- 
jamin Franklin as one of the first six "men of worth in 
the province! " 

The juxtaposition of names, Bowdoin, Pitts, and Win- 
throp, by Franklin, reminds me that President Jolin 
Adams, scarcely, if at all, inferior to P^ranklin in the posi- 
tion he holds in the world's history, testified his apprecia- 
tion of the Bowdoin, Winthrop, and Pitts families on many 
occasions. 

Thus he wrote his wife: 

Phil., May 27, 1776. 

A Governor & Lieut.-Gov. I hope will be chosen, & the Con- 
stitution a little more fixed. I hope Mr. Bowdoin will be Gov. 
if his health will permit, & Dr. Winthrop Lieut.-Gov. These are 
wise, learned, & prudent men. The first has a great fortune & 

Sir John and Lady Temple see the diary of Dr. Cutler. — Hist. Mag., 22, p. 82 : 
"Sunday, July 8, 1787 — [New- York City]. I dined at Sir John Temple's. 
* * Sir John is a complete gentleman, and Lady Temple is certainly 
the greatest beauty, notwithstanding her age, I ever saw. To a well-propor- 
tioned form, a perfectly fair skin, and completely adjusted features is added 
a soft but majestic air, an easy and pleasing sociability, a vein of fine sense 
which commands admiration and infuses delight. * * She is now 
a grandmother, but I should not suppose her to be more than twenty-four." 
Her real age was thirty-seven. 

3 



34 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

wealthy connections. The other has the advantage of a name 
and foniily which is much reverenced, besides his personal abili- 
ties, which are very great. 

On the 24th of June, 1776, he wrote to William Tudor: 
"I agree with you in your hopes that Massachusetts will 
proceed to complete her government. Mr. Bowdoin or 
Winthrop, I hope, will be chosen governor." 

Sec also his letter to Washington, June, 1775, post, com- 
mending him especially to Bowdoin, Winthrop, and Pitts, 
among others. 

To Francis Dana he writes, June 12, 1776: "I think the 
province never had so fair a representation, or so respect- 
able a house or board. You have a great number of in- 
genious, able men in each." This was when Bowdoin was 
president of the council, with the authority de facto of a 
governor, and when Dr. Winthrop was in the council, and 
John Pitts in the House, his father having died in January. 



The Tea Party. 

T\\\\ next picture I shall present will be of James Pitts» 
the councilor, and his three sons — John, Samuel, and 
Lendall."" John had been elected in May, 1773, a select- 

* It is impossible to thoroughly understand and appreciate the influence and 
position of James Pitts in lioston in the Revolution without looking in at his 
hospitable mansion and seeing around his board those six sons, every one of 
whom was a member of the Liberty Club, then so earnest and active. The 
records of those days were purposely left meagre by the actors, but I will 
neither trust to tradition, nor allow my imagination to indulge in any fancy 
picture, for history has left enduring proofs of the signal services of three ot 
those boys, John, Samuel, and Lendall, which show the heroism inherited 
from the mixture of the Huguenot and Puritan blood. John, born 1737, died 
1S15, married Mary Tyng; James, born 1741, died July 11, 1772, unmarried; 
Thomas, born 1743, died May 17, 1769, unmarried; William, born 1744, died 
Oct. 22, 1780, unmarried; Samuel, born Dec. 15, 1745, died March 6, 1805, 
married Johanna Davis; Lendall, born 1747, died Dec. 31, 1787, married 
Elizabeth Eitch. 



tup: tea party. 35 

man, with John Hancock, John ScoUay, Timotliy Newell, 
Thomas Marshall, Samuel Austin, and Oliver Wendell, all 
of whom were reelected in 1774 and 1775. 

The duties of a selectman were very tryini^ in those 
days. Frothingham says (Siege. 27), "the labors of the 
town officers at this time were arduous and important. 
At a crisis when so much depended on the good order of 
the town their services were required to be unusually ener- 
getic and judicious." 

Samuel Pitts, whose portrait by Copley is with us, was 
an officer of the cadets, the finest military company in the 
country, commanded by Col. Hancock, and described by 
Andrews as equal in drill and appearance to any of the 
regular army. 

Lendall Pitts, the Benjamin of the flock, the youngest 
of six sons, had yet his spurs to win, and so won them in 
one night's work as to send his name riding down the 
avenues of time with lustrous notice. 

The famous Tea Act was passed and became a law on 
the 1 0th of May, 1773. It was a deliberate attempt to 
establish the right of parhament to tax America, and give 
the East- India company the monopoly of the colonial 
market. 

The determination of the Americans not to pay a tax 
levied by a body in which they were not represented was 
as fixed as the purpose of the king to collect the dut}- on 
tea. The scheme suddenly roused more indignation than 
had been created by the Stamp Act. All America was in 
a flame. The mighty surge of passion plainly meant resist- 
ance. There was no peaceable mode of obtaining redress 
in such cases, as we have now in our P'ederal courts. The 
only way, then, to defeat an odious scheme to collect an 
illegal tax was to follow the methods of popular demon- 
stration, which had long been, and is to this day, customary 
in England, and thus render the law inoperative. 



36 ^R0V1^XIAI. pictures. 

The tea was shipped to America. The Boston patriots 
held great and excited pubhc meetings in Faneuil Hall, 
and adopted resolutions similar to those already passed in 
Philadelphia to resist the landing of the tea. 

John Pitts was a member of the committee to urge tiie 
consignees and commissioners to resign, and all the public 
meetings, to be legal, had to be called by him and his 
fellow-selectmen. His three associates on that committee 
were Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren. 
Wells says this committee hunted for the younger Hut- 
chinsons, who were consignees at Boston, and were told 
they had gone to Milton; they went to Milton and were 
told they had gone back to Boston; they rode back to 
Boston, and learned they had gone to Milton again; and 
there they went again, and obtained an unsatisfactor}' 
answer, and so reported at the great town meeting at 
Faneuil Hall. 

P'or days and weeks, earnest and excited meetings were 
held between patriots and loyalists, between councillors 
and representatives, between army and navy officers, be- 
tween commissioners and consignees, to devise some means 
to send back the tea without forfeiting the ships; and by 
secret clubs, cadets and sons of liberty to guard the ships, 
the docks, and the crews, and to see to it that the symbol 
of slavery should not touch Boston soil. 

This continued from October to December i6, 1773, 
gathering in excitement every day and night, when the 
final grapple occurred in this council-chamber, then in the 
Old South Church, and lastly at Griffin's wharf 

Leading patriots in all parts of America had been look- 
ing with anxiety for fear that Boston would now fail in 
the presence of an army and navy and a garrisoned fort. 
The city was filled with people from a radius of twenty 
miles. As Robert C. Winthrop said at )'our Centennial 
celebration here in 1873: "It became a simple question 
which should go under, British tea or American liberty." 



THE TEA PARTY. 3/ 

These exciting meetings and discussions had been held 
so long that the very last day had arrived on which the 
ships could stay without forfeiture. The governor refused 
a clearance, and the consignees refused to resign. 

At this point, December i6, 1773, let us pause a moment 
to notice the peculiar combination of circumstances which 
entitle the Pitts family to the gratitude of all their descend- 
ants and all lovers of American independence. 

It is remarkable that so many of the Massachusetts 
patriots were so fortunate as to be well repeated in their 
sons. Wealth, influence, and power, as a general rule, 
entail upon their inheritors, enervated natures, social 
luxury, and loss of noble aspirations. Ikit there were 
exceptions among the Boston fathers. 

John Adams, the colossus of the congress of 1776, lived 
to see his equally gifted son, John Ouincy, crowned with 
civil, political, and literary honors; and his grandson, in 
our own gloomy days of 1861 and '62, laid strong hands 
upon the British lion in his own den. 

James Bowdoin lived to see his son an active member of 
the Massachusetts convention of 1788, over which he him- 
self was president, and which ratified the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution; fit beginning of a career which 
ended by endowing the college which bears his name; a 
name whose glory was merged in the last generation in 
that of Gov. Thomas Lindall Winthrop, and has stood like 
an epitome of fame in the Centennial orations at Boston, 
at Bunker HiFl, and Yorktown, in the still more renowned 
presence of his son, Robert C. Winthrop, the great-grand- 
son of Gov. Bowdoin. 

Samuel Dexter lived to see his son Samuel in the cabi- 
net of President Adams, and who received the highest 
encomiums of Judge Story and Daniel Webster as the 
giant of the New- England bar — a legal reputation kept 
conspicuous to this day by P^ranklin Dexter in the third 



38 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

and Wirt Dexter in the fourth generation from the coun- 
cillor of 1773. 

Richard Dana, dying in 1772, lived to see his son Fran- 
cis give promise of the first-class patriot who became 
Adams' right-hand man in his foreign ministry, and to 
hand down a name that has been honored and famous for 
four generations since. 

Gov. Increase Sumner was father of Gen. William H. 
Sumner, a member of the Massachusetts house from 1808 
to 1819. 

Thomas Cushing's blood and brains have helped to fill 
and adorn the supreme courts of Massachusetts and the 
United States. 

Col. Prescott, whose magnificent statue graces the brow 
of Bunker Hill on the spot where his bodily but inspired 
presence stood on the 17th of June, 1775, was the father 
of a great judge and jurist, and the grandsire of the illus- 
trious historian. 

John Lowell, the patriot lawyer, was followed by two 
distinguished sons, John and Charles, and his grandson, 
James Russell Lowell, roused the English reading world 
as by an electric shock in his "Present Crisis," taught them 
how to master the P'ortress of Selfishness in the Vision of 
Sir Launfall, and has made the name of American honored 
in every court in P2uroi)e. 

Joseph Hawley, the legal giant of Western ALissachu- 
setts, whose "broken hints" in August, 1774, beginning 
" zve must figJit',' was read to Patrick Henr}^ before his 
famous speech, using the same memorable words — Joseph 
Hawley, a very tower of strength in every provincial con- 
gress of Massachusetts — has been followed by worthy sons 
until the battle-fields of our great Rebellion and the house 
and senate of our National capital have grown familiar 
with the same clarion tones from the self-same name. 

Oliver Wendell, the indefatigable overseer of the poor 



OLIVER \YENDELL HOLMES. 39 

of Boston, the true selectman, the staunch and rehable 
patriot — why mention Jiis descendants! at the mere antici- 
pation of a name you all so love, every stone in this old 
State House seems to start into life and ring out the song, 

"The stones of King Street still are red, 
And yet the bioody red-coats come; 
1 hear their pacing sentrys tread, 
The click of steel, the tap of drum." 

Can you not hear the fields of Lexington sobbing out 
his words, 

"Green be the grass where her martyrs are lying"; 

and as if answering the wail, the waves which break upon 
long wharf are jubilantly resounding, 

"The red-coats have vanished: the last grenadier 
Stepped into the boat from the end of our pier." 

And hark!— from the belfry of the Old South comes his 
grandmother's story, 

" Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one 
remembers 
All the achings and the quakings, of the times that 
tried men's souls." 

And still this roll of honor could be largely extended. 
But it was the peculiar fortune of James PiTTS to labor 
in that grandest revolution of the ages ivitJi his oivn sons 
by Jiis side. 

It was the tender and loving privilege of John, Samuel, 
and Lendall Pitts to walk those paths whose failure led to 
the scaffold, the axe, or the gallows, and whose success led 
to liberty, freedom, and glory, with heartbeats keeping 
time to those of their patriot sire. 

When the great contest over the tea tax culminated; 
when the ships laden with the crucial test were in the har- 



40 PKOVINXIAL I'ICTURES. 

bor so long that they must be unladen, or forfeited, or pass 
into the possession of the navy and army; while Castle 
William with its shotted guns frowned upon their beloved 
but doomed city; when Gov. Hutchinson met the Massa- 
chusetts council and begged their aid on behalf of the king 
and parliament, it was then that the cause of the colonies 
was urged, defended, and insisted upon by five men, 
recorded by Frothingham in his Life of Joseph Warren, 
page 259, as James Bowdoin, James Pitts, Samuel Dexter, 
vVrtcmus Ward, and John Winthrop. 

James Pitts was the oldest of the five patriots, and his 
age and inflexible temper, his great wealth and long expe- 
rience, gave his opinions and arguments a force which 
Gov. Hutchinson would scarcely have yielded to any other 
man in Boston. No one knew Mr. Pitts better than Gov. 
Hutchinson. They were born about the same time, one in 
1710, the other in 171 1, and both graduated at Harvard. 
His wealth, his business interests, his university and pro- 
fessional acquaintances added weight to his inflexible 
temper and natural talents. Nor was this all. The in- 
evitable tendency of great wealth is to make men conserva- 
tive and selfish, but this tendency was more than counter- 
balanced in his case by having such a wife as Elizabeth 
Bowdoin. The Huguenot blood, which would not permit 
her grandfather to enjoy his comfortable profession in 
France in slavery, mingled with the independent blood of 
the Puritan Pordages and Lyndes of New England devel- 
oped in her a character fit for the sister of the chiefest 
patriot in Boston's aristocracy and the king's council — 
fitter still for the wife of an inflexible, determined patriot 
in the council, in the marketplace, wharves, and banks of 
Boston; and fittest of all for the mother of liberty-loving, 
liberty-working sons. 

The conservatism, the age, the natural desire for ease, 
the present comforts which tend to procrastinate the days 



JAMES PITTS. 41 

of trial were all overcome by the youthful impetuosity of 
his grown-up boys — all sons of liberty, all members of the 
patriotic clubs. Another fact which made James Pitts so 
conspicuous a character at this time — December, 1773 — 
may have been that the old councillor was gathering wis- 
dom and sympathy from the bereavements which at some 
time come to all. The old family tomb in the rear of the 
chancel of King's Chapel, but a few feet west of the statue 
of Franklin, had been opened in October, 1771, for the 
loving wife and mother of his children; in 1769, ten years 
after the beginning of the long and weary contest for Con- 
stitutional liberty, he lost his son and partner, Thomas, at 
the age of twenty-six ; and in 1772, his son and namesake, 
James, died in the Bermudas, aged thirty. Surely, if there 
was a character in Boston fitted by birth, education, 
wealth, social connections, the heritage and reflex influ- 
ence of noble sons, and by the universal sympathy of men 
toward bereavement, it was James Pitts, the patriot coun- 
cillor, in December, 1773. I can not but think that it was, 
in some part, his influence over his old friends. Govs. Ber- 
nard and Hutchinson, and the hospitable and friendly in- 
tercourse which he had held with Gov. Gage, w^hich kept 
back those men from following out the bloody and arbi- 
trary instructions of Lord Dartmouth and George III; 
from seizing and carrying to the Tower of London, or 
from beheading or hanging, the leaders of the Revolution, 
and precipitating a conflict which would have laid Boston 
in ashes and her streets in blood before any union of the 
colonies or concert of action could have been perfected. 
Time to bring- together the discordant elements of the thir- 
teen colonies into a union which just barely accomplished 
victory was all important to their success. 

And now, on the i6th day of December, 1773, this re- 
markable .scene appeared. While James Pitts, the old 
councillor, backed by his younger brothers, Bowdoin, Dex- 



42 PROVINXIAL PICTURES. 

ter, Ward, and W'inthrop, was battling for his countr)- 
against Gov. Hutchinson and the loyal members of the 
council, and while his eldest son, John Pitts, a selectman, 
and one of the committee to cope with the consignees and 
coriimissioners, was one of the town officers presiding over 
the greatest mass-meeting ever yet seen at the Old South 
Church, his youngest son, Lendall, was waiting, in war- 
paint and tomahawk, for the time when Samuel Adams 
solemnly pronounced, "This meeting can do nothing more 
to save the country." Their warwhoop thrilled an audience 
whose nerves had been excited to the last tension. Hcwes, 
one of the party, says, " Pitts, who was quite a military 
man, was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces then 
and there assembled." In orderly and stern array they 
marched to the music of a fife to the guarded ships, while 
thousands of patriots, including Hancock and Samuel Pitts 
and the other cadets, kept silent watch for three long 
hours, while the immortal band, though under the guns of 
an enemy who could at any moment have blown them to 
atoms, were emptying into the sea the offensive cargo 
which George HI and his obsequious parliament had sent 
to test and prove the subjection of America to their im- 
perial power. 

It is, perhaps, worthy of mention that the secret act of 
his younger brother, Lendall, was openly indorsed, and all 
its consequences assumed by his brother John. About a 
week after the tea-party, when it was currently supposed 
that all who took part in that daring performance would 
be arrested if discovered, and executed for treason, the 
committee on correspondence passed the following resolu- 
tion: 

That the subscribers do engage to exert our utmost influence 
to support and vindicate each other, and any person or persons 
who may be likely to suffer for any noble efforts they may have 
made to save their country by defeating the operations of the 



THE TEA TARTY. 43 

British parliament expressly designed to extort a revenue from 
the Colonies against their consent. 

Samuel Adams, J'^hn Pitts, Robert Pierpont, Oliver Wendell, 
Thomas Young, William Cooper, William Powell, William Moli- 
neaux, Benjamin Church, Joseph (ireenleaf, Cadt. John Bradford, 
Nathan Appleton, John Sweetzer, William Greenleaf, Deacon 
Boyton. 

Boston, December 24, 1773. 

"Here was a pledge made among a plain, democratic 
committee of the people, for mutual protection at this 
perilous crisis against the most powerful nation in the 
world, whose king and parliament they had defied in the 
cause of justice and humanity." (Life of S. Adams, Vol. 
II, p. 126.) 

The effect of this act was wonderful on both sides of the 
Atlantic. Samuel Adams said, "You can not imagine the 
height of joy that sparkles in the eyes and animates the 
countenances as well as the hearts of all we meet on this 
occasion." 

John Adams said, " This is the most magnificent move- 
ment of all. There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity in 
this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire. This 
destruction of the tea is so bold and it must have so im- 
portant consequences and so lasting that I can not but 
consider it an epoch in history." In New York, Phila- 
delphia, and Charleston the inhabitants were jubilant. 
Gov. Hutchinson declared " it had created a new union 
among the patriots." 

In another place John Adams said, "The destruction of 
the tea was one of those events, rare in the life of nations, 
which, occurring in a peculiar state of public opinion, serve 
to wrest public affairs from the control of men, however 
wise or great, and cast them into the irresistible current of 
ideas." 

Wells calls it "the great crowning act of the Revolution 
prior to the commencement of hostilities." 



44 rkovin'cial pictures. 

The Last Provincial Counxil of Massachusetts 

was elected on May 25th, 1774. On Ma\' jist, Gov. Hut- 
chinson wrote thus to the earl of Dartmouth from Boston: 

Mv Lord: — Since my last of the 19th, the general court 
assembled here to be sworn and elect the members of his 
majesty's council. The enclosed paper will inform your lordship 
of all that passed on the occasion, in which you will observe that 
I refused my consent to the election of thirteen of the new coun- 
cillors. The three first on that list were of the old council who 
drew up the report of the committee of the council on the 27th 
November last, and the rest either committee men for correspond- 
ence or such persons as I could not ai)prove. 

A list of the councillors elected by the assembly of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay on Wednesday, 25th May, 1774: 

Elected and consented to by the Elected and refused consent by the 
Governor : Governor : 

Samuel Uanforth, Jas. Bowdoin, 

John Erving, Sam'l Dexter, 

James Pitts, John Winthrop, 

Artemas Ward, Wm. Phillips, 

Benj. Greenleaf, John Adams, 

Caleb Gushing, Jas, Prescott, 

Samuel Phillips, Timothy Danielson, 

Richard Derby, Jr., Michael Farley, 

James Otis, Benj. Austin, 

William Seaver, Norton Quincy, 

Walter Spooner, Enoch Ereeman, 

Jeremiah Powell, Jedediah Poster, 

Benj. Chadburn, Jerathmiel Bowers. 

Geo. Leonard, Jr., 

Jedediah Preble, 

On March 14th, 1774, George III sent a note to Lord 
North, in which he urged an alteration of the charter of 
Massachusetts, and remarked that Lord Dartmouth was 
very firm in its expediency. 



LAST PROVINCIAL COUNXIL. 45 

Lord North introduced a bill " to purge the constitution 
of all its crudities, and give a degree of strength and spirit 
to the civil magistracy and to the executive power. There 
was much deliberation in the cabinet relative to the coun- 
cil, Lord IMansfield urging that the nomination of the 
members ought to be vested in the crown. 

On March 31st, the Boston Port Bill became a law, 
which was intended to, and did for some years, destroy 
the business of this city. On April 15th, a bill was intro- 
duced for vesting the nomination of the councillors in the 
crown; took all executive power from the house; judges 
were to be appointed by the governor, and juries by the 
sherift'; town meetings could only be called by the gov- 
ernor, and could discuss topics specified by him in the call. 
It passed on May 6th, to the great satisfaction of the king, 
who assented to it on May 20th, and it went into effect at 
once, and the provincial council of Massachusetts ceased 
to have any leg.^1 existence. 

A protest in the house of lords objected that this act in- 
vested the governor and council with powers with which 
the British constitution had not trusted his majesty and 
his privy council, and that the lives, liberties, and proper- 
ties of the subject were put into their hands without con- 
trol. 

A measure more subversive of freedom, says Earl Rus- 
sell (Life of Fox, Vol. I, p. 6^,), more contrary to all con- 
stitutional principles, and more likely to excite America 
against imperial authority could not well be formed. 

The magnificent appeals of Chatham, Shelburne, Cam- 
den, Barre, and others who contended that America was 
only fighting for their constitutional rights, were all lost in 
the frenzy of indignation which fired the British heart on 
account of the destruction of their tea. 

The condemnation of this and the Port Bill in the colo- 
nies was indignant and universal. In Virginia, George 



46 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

Washington presided over a meeting of the freeholders of 
Fairfax County, which resolved that unless the cruel 
measures were counteracted, the end would be the ruin of 
the Colonies. 

Hutchinson was called to England, and Gen. Gage was 
appointed governor of Massachusetts. He landed May 19, 
and on the motion of James Pitts, the council, so soon to 
be superseded, moved an address to him of a character to 
remove any unfavorable impression which re])ort might 
have created as to the character and disposition of the in- 
habitants. They received him with military salutes, and 
gave him a grand banquet at Faneuil Hall. 

Gov. Hutchinson sailed for England June i and arrived 
July I. 

[Extracts from the journal of Thomas Hutchinson, governor of 
Massachusetts.] 

I St July, 1774. Received a card from Lord Dartmouth, desir- 
ing to see nie at his house before one o'clock. I went soon after 
twelve; and, after near an hour's conversation, his lordship pro- 
posed introducing me immediately to the King. 

■:(. -* * * ;.- ■.',- * * 

A7//0-. Nothing could be more cruel than the treatment you 
met with in betraying your private letters. (The King, turning 
to Lord Dartmouth.) My Lord, I remember nothing in them to 
which the least exception could be taken ? 

Lort/ Dartmouth. That appears, Sir, from the report of the 
Committee of Council, and from your ISL-ijesty's order thereon. 

King. Could you ever find, Mr. Hutchinson, how those letters 
came to New England ? 

Hntchmsoii. Doctor Franklin, may it please your Majesty, has 
made a public declaration that he sent them, and the speaker has 
acknowledged to me that he received them. 1 do not remember 
that he said directly from Doctor Franklin; but it was understood 
between us that they came from him. I had heard before that 
they came either direct from him, or that he had sent them 



" \VIIO IS MR. PITTS ? " 47 

through another channel; and that they were to be communicated 
to six persons only, and then to be returned, without suffering 
any copies being taken. I sent for the Speaker, and let him 
know what I had heard, which came from one of the six to a 
friend, and so to me. The Speaker said they were sent to him,, 
and that he was at first restrained from showing them to any 
more than six persons. 

Kitig. Did he tell you who were the persons? 

Hutchinson. Yes, Sir. There was Mr. Bowdoin, Mr. Pitts, 
Doctor \Vinthrop, Doctor Chauncy, Doctor Cooper, and himself. 
They are not all the same which had been mentioned before. 
The two Mr. Adamses had been named to me in room of Mr. 
Pitts and Doctor Winthrop. 

King. Mr. Bowdoin, I have heard of. 

Lord Daritnoiith. I think he is father-in-law to Mr. Temple. 

King. Who is Mr. Pitts ? 

Hutchinson. He is one of the Council; married Mr. Bowdoin's 
sister. 

King. I have heard of Doctor Chauncy and Dr. Cooper, but 
who is Dr. Winthrop ? 

Hutchinson. He is not a doctor of divinity. Sir, but of law; a 
professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the college ^ 
and last year was chose of the Council. 

King. I have heard of one Mr. Adams; but who is the other? 

Hutchinson. He is a lawyer. Sir. 

King. Brother to the other ? 

Hutchinson. No, Sir; a relation. He has been of the House, 
but is not now. He was elected by the two Houses to be of the 
Council, but negatived. 

While Hutchinson was on his way to England, occurred 
the memorable meeting of the general court at Salem, on 
June 7th, 1774. The fifteen councillors elected under the 
charter were still in office, and boldly announced to the 
governor on the 9th their invincible attachment to their 
rights and liberties, and expressed the wish that the prin- 
ciples and general conduct of Gage's administration might 



48 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

be a happy contrast to that of his two immediate predeces- 
sors. At this point the governor stopped the reading, and 
soon after sent the council a bitter message, denouncing 
the address as an insult upon his majesty and an affront 
upon himself. On June 17th, with locked doors, and the 
key in Samuel Adams' pocket, and Secretary F"lucker on 
the outside trying to prorogue the assembly, the house of 
representatives elected five delegates to a continental con- 
gress at Philadelphia. James Howdoin, the admitted 
leader of the council for years, lead the delegation, Samuel 
and John Adams, Thomas Gushing, and Robert Treat 
Paine being his associates, any three of whom should be 
a quorum. 

It never can cease to be a matter of regret that when 
that famous continental congress of fifty -three met on 
September 5, 1774, at Philadelphia, James Bowdoin, owing 
to the severe and simultaneous illness of his wife and him- 
self, could not have taken the place assigned him at the 
head of the Massachusetts delegation. 

Massachusetts had been the pivot of the colonial contest 
for nearly fifteen years. Every principle of constitutional 
law and the natural rights of man had been there dis- 
cussed and argued and settled by the greatest intellects of 
the day, descendants of the liberty-loving party of Great 
Britain for a century. The State papers that had been 
there written and adopted have been declared by Ghatham, 
Burke, and Brougham in England and Daniel Webster* 

* In his last speech in IJoston, only a few weeks before his death, Webster 
uttered these words : 

" From my earliest age the political history of .Massachusetts has been a sort 
of beau ideal to me. 

" Massachusetts struck for the liberty of a continent. It is her everlasting 
glory that hers was the first effort ever made by man to separate America from 
European dominion. That was vast and comprehensive. We look back upon 
it now, and well may we wonder at the great extent of mind and genius and 
capacity which influenced the men of the Revolution. " 



JAMES BOWDOIN. 49 

of our own land to ha\'e been amonti^ the most master!}' 
achievements of the human mind. No councillor in Mas- 
sachusetts, the theater of the war both of ideas and arms, 
had taken so active a part in the preparation and passage 
of those papers as Bowdoin. He not onl}- represented the 
same liberal and grand ideas that emanated from the 
Adamses, Warrens, and Otises, but he represented the 
property class, and possessed an exceptionally large 
fortune. 

John O Adams says, p. 146, "The committee of five 
had not been selected without great care, and the members 
of it closely represented the various interests of the colony. 
Mr. Bowdoin was of the few favored by fortune above the 
average who had decidedly embraced the patriot cause." 

In John Adams' letter to Timothy Pickering, p. 512, 
Vol. II, he says: 

Gushing, two Adamses, and Paine, all destitute of fortune, four 
poor pilgrims, proceeded in one coach, were escorted through 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey into 
Pennsylvania. 

\\'e were met at Frankfort by Dr. Rush, Mifflin, Bayard, and 
several others of the Sons of Liberty in Philadelphia, who desired 
a conference with us. They asked leave to give us some infor- 
mation and advice, which we thankfully granted. They repre- 
sented to us that the friends of Government in Boston and the 
Eastern States had represented us as four desperate adventurers. 
"Mr. Gushing was a harmless kind of man, but poor; Mr. Samuel 
Adams was desperately poor; John Adams and Paine w-ere two 
young lawyers of no great talents, reputation, or weight, who had 
no other means of raising themselves into consequence than by 
courting popularity."' 

^^'e were all suspected of having independence in \ iew. Now, 

said they, you must not utter the word "independence," in Gon- 

gress or in private; if you do, you are undone. No man dares to 

speak of it; you must not come forward with '-any bold meas- 

4 



50 TROVINCIAL I'ICTURES. 

ures; you must not pretend to take the Lead.'' Mr. McDougall 
and P. \'. Livingston, in New York, the week before had takeiii 
the same or stronger ground. See his diary, Ih., p. 350. 

Not only were the Adamses and Paine and Gushing 
hampered by their own limited means and the necessities of 
their families, but they were warned in advance on their 
way through New York that they were dreaded by many 
as levelers and upstarts, who had nothing to lose and every- 
thing to gain by overturning affairs. If l-5owdoin, the 
leader of the Massachusetts council for ten years, the son 
of a councillor, the son-in-law of another wealthy council- 
lor, John P^rving, the friend and correspondent of P'ranklin, 
and the father-in-law of John Temple, heir to one of the 
oldest baronetages of P^ngland ; if this man and this influ- 
ence had been added to the four intellectual giants who did 
go, who can tell how it would have strengthened those four I 
how it would have stopped the mouths of carping tories! 
how it would have affected the debates and the declara- 
tions of that famous body! who can say that it would not 
have produced that famous Declaration of Independence, 
pari passu with the Suffolk Resolves, before the snow fell in 
the autumn of 1774.'' If that grand declaration had been 
adopted at once w^ith spontaneous unanimity, closely upon 
the heels of the acts of parliament, which subverted the 
charter rights of the Colonies, it might have sta\-ed the 
commercial hand of Britain before she committed herself 
irretrievably to a war which added iJ" 105,000,000 sterling 
to her debt, and cut off thousands of her bravest and best 
lives! Even if it had not so staj-ed her hand, the assist- 
ance from P"rance, which ultimately saved us, would surely 
have been more prompt than it was. The doubts, the 
hesitation, the fears, the temporizing policy which delayed 
that declaration for twenty months, might have been other- 
wise if the ardent and princely genius of Bowdoin could 
have been there added to his four great brothers. Even 



THE MAXDAMUS COUNCILLORS. 5 I 

in old age he had the firmness to put down the rebeUion 
which threatened to obHterate all the good the Revolution 
had accomplished in Massachusetts, l^ut, alas, sickness, 
to which all men and women are liable, prostrated both 
Bow'doin and his wife, just at the period when his services 
were most needed. The four went without him. On 
September 6th, 1774, he writes Josiah Ouincy that he "has 
been journe)nng for two months about the province with 
]\Irs. Howdoin, on account of her health, the bad state of 
which has prevented my attending the congress." On 
June 15th, 1775, Mrs. John Adams writes to her husband: 
" Mr. l^owdoin and his lady are in the house of Mrs. Bor- 
land. He, poor gentleman, is so low that I apprehend he 
is hastening to a 'house not made with hands.' He looks 
like a mere skeleton, speaks faint and low, is racked with 
a violent cough, and I think far advanced in consumption." 

Let us now go back to Boston in June, 1774. 

On June 3d, Lord Dartmouth had sent instructions to 
Gov. Gage to enforce the new acts, altering, rather abolish- 
ing the charter and the so-called Regulating Act, also 
commissions for thirty-si.K councillors to be called vianda- 
jiius councillors. 

The official position of James Pitts was thus illegalK- 
and without pretense of right, but only by virtue of power 
and arms, forcibly and forever terminated. 

Twenty-four of the inandaiims councillors accepted. An 
informal meeting was held August 8, and all were notified 
to assemble on the i6th for the transaction of business. 
The governor prepared to support their authority by mili- 
tary force. He had, at his command, troops from famous 
European battle-fields. One regiment was at Salem where 
he resided; one at Castle William, in Boston Harbor; one 
regiment at Fort Hill, and four regiments on the common. 
Nearly thirty ships of war were in the harbor. He sent 
for John Pitts and the other selectmen of Boston, and told 



52 PROVINCIAL riCTURES. 

them he should execute the law against town meetings. 
The ))iaiidaviHS councillors who accepted felt the storm of 
public indignation, and many of them resigned. 

The continental congress at Philadelphia, on October lO, 
resolved that all persons in Massachusetts who consented 
to take office under tlie new acts ought to be considered 
wicked tools of the despotism that was preparing to destroy 
the rights which God, nature, and compact had given to 
America, and ought to be held in abhorrence by all good 
men. 

They also resolved that if parliament attempt the exe- 
cution of the late acts in Massachusetts by force, in such 
case all America ought to support the inhabitants of Mas- 
sachusetts in their opposition. 

John Pitts, who had been, in 1774, an active member of 
the famous committee of correspondence, increased and 
broadened the sphere of his labor and influence. On 
October i6th, 1774, he writes to Mr. Samuel Adams at 
Philadelphia: 

The Committee of Correspondence are firm. In your absence 
there has been, as usual, the improvement of the ready pens of a 
Warren and Church— the criticism of a Greenleaf— the vigilance 
and industry of a Molineaux, and the united wisdom of those 
who commonly compose the meeting; but when I have been 
there I have sometimes observed the want of one who never 
failed to animate. After referring you to Mr. Tudor for particu- 
lars of our political affairs, I ha-e only to express my ardent 
wishes for a happy determination of your Congress, after which 
that we may see } ou again as soon as may be, for, as " iron 
sharpeneth iron, so does the countenance of a man his friend.' 

In August, 1774, he was elected one of five members 
from Boston to attend a county congress at Stoughton; 
Joseph Warren, William Phillips, Oliver Wendell, and 
Benjamin Church being the others. The Regulating Act 
forbade town meetings, but Pitts and the other selectmen 



THE SUP'FOLK RESOLVES. 53 

called a meeting, August 16, 1774, for a county congress 
at Stoughton. 

The congress met and adjourned to meet at Dedham, 
September 6, and on September 9 met again at Milton, 
and unanimously adopted the famous Suffolk Resolves. 

Frothingham says in his Life of Gen. Warren, p. 365 : 
" These resolves were adopted by men who were terribly 
in earnest. They said that 'the power, but not the justice, 
the vengeance, but not the wisdom of Great Britain were 
acting with unrelenting severity. That it was an indispen- 
sable duty which they owed to God, their country, them- 
selves, and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in their 
power to maintain, defend, and preserve those civil and 
religious rights and liberties for which many of their 
fathers fought, bled, and died, and to hand them down 
entire to future generations.' " 

These resolves were carried to the continental congress 
by Paul Revere, and they elicited great applause. 

On October 27th, 1774, the first provincial congress of 
Massachusetts met at Salem. Among the first motions 
put and carried was that "the Hon. James Pitts, Hon. 
Artemas Ward, John Erving, and the balance of the fifteen 
councillors elected in May should be desired to attend this 
congress as the constitutional councillors of this province, 
as constitutional members of his majesty's council of this 
colony by the royal charter, chosen to said office last May 
session," thus ignoring the action of the king and his minis- 
ters in appointing the mandamus councillors as a violation 
of the charter. 

On the 7th of December, 1774, the town of Boston 
elected John Pitts as delegate to the second provincial 
congress, to be held at Cambridge, in February, 1775, his 
associates being Thomas Gushing, Samuel Adams, John 
Hancock, Joseph Warren, Benjamin Church, and Oliver 
Wendell. Samuel Dexter came from Dedham, Joseph 



54 rROVIXCIAI. PK ITKES. 

Ilawlc)' from Northampton, and jiult^e lyn*^ from Dun- 
stable. Tliat congress met at Cambridge, Feb'\' i, 1775; 
John Hancock was chosen president and Benjamin Lincohi 
secretary. They immediately appointed, as a committee 
on the state of the province, Hancock, Hawley, Adams, 
Warren, Paine, John INtts, Holton, Heath, Gerrish, Gush- 
ing, Ward, and Gardner. Their duties were constant and 
arduous. The members were placed under pledge of honor 
not to divulge the debates, and their subjects are left to 
conjecture. Wells says, p. 260, Vol. H: "The body itself 
was the most remarkable, in some respects, that had yet 
convened in America. They were a body of statesmen, 
mostly untutored in the arts of diplomacy, but not sur- 
passed in any civilized society in the world for intelligence 
and devotion to the rights of manla'nd. Courage, deter- 
mination, sagacity, piety, and all the qualities which com- 
pose true greatness in men, were there, and time has proved 
the consummate wisdom of all their measures." 

We next see John Pitts at the Old South Meeting- 
House, on the 5th of March, 1775. Adams was the 
moderator, and (jen. Warren delix-cred an oration on the 
anniversary of the Boston massacre. A Tor}' writer says: 
" On Monday, the Old South Meeting-House was crowded 
with nobility and fame, the Selectmen, with Adams, Church, 
Hancock, and Cooper, and others, assembled in the pulpit, 
which was covered with black; the front seats were filled 
with l^ritish officers. A volcano was ready to burst forth, 
and the time for the eruption was not far distant." 

On the 22d of March, the congress met again, at Con- 
cord. The committee on the state of the province digested 
the measures of the congress, and had them full)' prepared 
before reporting plans of action. Hiere is scarcely an 
instance where any of their decisions were recommitted. 

On the 8th of April, this committee reported a resol\-e 
providing for an armed alliance of [Massachusetts, Con- 



J(M^N PITIES. " 55 

iiccticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, to raise and 
equip a general arnn-, and to send delegates to meet those 
governments. One hundred and three members were pres- 
ent, and only seven voted against it; and, in an incredibly 
short period, those New-England States alone formed a 
•defensive league against the power of Great Britain. 

On the I2th of April, 1775, John Pitts, Nathaniel Bailey, 
Aaron Davis, Moses Bullen, and Abner Ellis were appointed 
the Suffolk County committee on the state of the Province. 
On the 15th of May, John Pitts was added to the commit- 
tee of supplies; on the i6th of May, he was put upon a 
•committee relative to prisoners at Boston. 

On the /th of June, the congress adopted a resolution, 
which was the starting-point of that great naval success 
which so electrified the world in the feats of Commodore 
John Paul Jones and others: 

Ordered that Col. Joseph Warren, John Pitts, Elbridge Gerry, 
John Hancock, Col. Freeman, Samuel Dexter, Mr. Pickering, 
Mr. Batchelder, and Mr. Greenleaf be a committee to consider 
the expediency of establishing a number of small armed vessels 
to cruise on our sea-coasts for the protection of our trade and 
the annoyance of our enemies, and to observe secrecy. 

P"rom this time on, these ardent laborers for American 
independence were at work night and day raising troops, 
supplying arms and materials of war, taking care of the 
thousands inside of the besieged city of Boston, corre- 
sponding with the other colonies and the general conti- 
nental congress, and their friends in Europe. 

I find a letter of John Pitts (in PVothingham's Siege of 
Boston, p. 160) from Watertovvn, July 20, 1775, to Samuel 
Adams, then at Philadelphia. He says: 

" I tind the letters in general from you and the rest of our 
friends complain of not having particular information relative to 
the late battle of Charlestown. I do assure you the particulars 



56 I'ROVIXCIAI. I'ICTURES. 

any further than what I have already wrote you I have not been 
able to obtain from any one. To be plain, it appears to me there 
never was more confusion and less command. No one appeared 
to have any but Col. Prescott, whose bravery can never be enough 
acknowledged and ai)i)lauded."' 

Gen. Washington left Philadelphia on the 21st of June, 
1775, and was met by a committee of the provincial con- 
gress at Springfield. When he reached Watertown the 
whole congress honored him with a congratulatory address 
and promised to contribute all the aid in their power in 
the discharge of the duties of his exalted office. He 
replied on July 4, in which he says: 

"1 only emulate the virtue and public spirit of the whole prov- 
ince of Massachusetts Bay, which, with a lirmness and patriotism 
without example in modern history, has sacrificed all the comforts 
of social and political life in support of the rights of mankind 
and the welfare of our common country; my highest ambition is 
to be the happy instrument of vindicating those rights, and to see 
this devoted province again restored to peace, liberty, and safety."' 

Let us pass over the eight months of labor and toil 
which intervened before the evacuation of Boston by the 
British, on the 17th of March, 1776 — months of depriva- 
tion, anxiety, and doubt, with raw recruits badly paid, 
badly clothed, badly fed, with a city full of people without 
fuel and almost without provisions, and the necessary irri- 
tations between a hireling soldiery and an idle communit)-, 
staying because they could not go away. 

Slowly and surely Gen. Washington encircled the garri- 
soned town with his offensive intrenchments, and at last 
the British army, once thought invincible, crept upon their 
ships and sailed away, and Massachusetts was forever freed 
from the tread of a foreign foe in arms. 

The almost worn-out selectmen of Boston immediately 
waited on Washinerton with the followinsf address: 



SELECTMEN OF BOSTON. 57 

May it please your Excellency: The Selectmen of Hoston in 
behalf of themselves and fellow-citizens, with all grateful respect 
congratulate you on the success of your military operations in the 
recovery of this town from an enemy collected from the once 
respected IJritons, who in this instance are characterized by 
malice and fraud, rapine and plunder in every trace left behind 
them. 

Happy are we that this acquisition has been made with so little 
effusion of human blood, which, next to the Divine favor, permit 
us to ascribe to your Excellency's wisdom, evidenced in every 
part of the long besiegement. 

If it be possible to enhance the noble feelings of the person 
who, from the most affluent enjoyments, could throw himself into 
the hardships of a camp to save his country, uncertain of success, 
't is then possible this victory will heighten your Excellency's hap- 
piness, when you consider you have not only saved a large, 
elegant, and once populous city from total destruction, but re- 
lieved the few wretched inhabitants from all the horrors of a 
besieged town, from the insults and abuses of a disgraced and 
chagrined army and restored many to their quiet habitations who 
had fled for safety to the bosom of their country. May your 
Excellency live to see the just rights of America settled on a firm 
basis, which felicity we sincerely wish you ; and at a late period 
may that felicity be changed into happiness eternal ! 

John Scollav, ] 

i TiMO. Nkwell, I c- 7 y 

rj. TVT Selectmen 

Thomas Marshall, I r 

Samuel Austin, f „ ^ 

r\ ^xr Boston. 

Oliver Wendell, | 
John Pitts, J 

To His Excellency George Washington, 

General of the United Forces of Afnerica. 

On the 29th of March, a joint committee from the coun- 
cil and house of representatives of Massachusetts waited 
upon Washington with a long and flattering testimonial. 

John Pitts, then not quite thirty-eight years of age, was 



5«S PROVIXtlAL riCTURES. 

a nicnibcr of that liousc, but James the councilor was no 
h-)ngcr by his side. On tlic 25tli of January, when his 
beloved city was still in tlic hands of a vandal soldiery, his 
patriotic spirit passed away to a world of peace. The 
only notice I have found of his last sickness is in a letter 
from John Adams to George Washington, as the latter 
was about starting for Cambridge to enter upon his great 
career of glor}'. Mr. Adams commends Washington to 
the tried and trusty souls of Massachusetts: 

Phil.'Vdelphia, June, 1775. 

"In compliance with your request, I have considered of what 
you propose, and am obliged to give you my sentiments very 
briefly, and in great haste. 

In general, sir, there will be three committees which are, and 
will be, composed of our best men, such whose judgment and 
integrity may be most relied on. I mean the Committee on the 
State of the Province [of whom John Pitts was one], the Com- 
mittee of Safety, and the Committee of Supplies. 

But, lest this should be too general, I beg leave to mention 
particularly James Warren, Joseph Hawley, John Winthrop, Dr. 
Warren, Col. Palmer, and Elbridge Gerry. Mr. Bowdoin, Mr. 
, Sever, and Mr. Dexter, lately of the Council, will be found to be 
very worthy men, as 7tr// as Mr. [James] PITTS, 7C'//o, /am sorry 
to hear, is in ill health. The recommendations of these gentle- 
men may be relied on." (Adams' Works, Vol. IX, p. 359.) 

His death was thus announced in No. 1081 of the Boston 
Gazette ajid Country Journal, February 5, 1776: "On the 
25th of Januar\- last departed this life at Dunstable, in the 
66th year of his age, the Honorable James Pitts, a gentle- 
man who has greatly distinguished himself at our Council 
lioard for inflexible virtue and warm attachment to the 
common rights of America, during the late corrupt and 
infamous administration of Bernard and Hutchinson. His 
death is as much regretted by the Public in the loss of a 
Patriot as it is felt b\' his children, f;xmily, and acquaint- 



DEATH OF JA.MKS PITTS. 59 

ance, to whom he had endeared himself by the most affec- 
tionate offices and friendly intercourse in the more private 
walks of life." 

It is sad to think that this noble patriot, after so long 
and happy and successful a career under the first two 
Georges, should have passed the last years of his life in 
such bitter and exciting tumult, and that his health, like 
that of his brother Bowdoin, should have given way just 
at the age when he could have rendered his country so 
much service, and that the last year of his life was spent 
in physical pain and exile from his once happy home and 
from the grave of his wife and children. There is no 
record of his sickness, but among the few papers left by 
him and now in my possession is one in the handwriting 
of that idol of the Revolution, Joseph Warren, the mart}-r 
of Bunker Hill. It is endorsed in Mr. Pitts' own writing, 
" Dr. Warren's Advice," and contains a very full prescrip- 
tion and direction.- 

You may to this day see the house where he died, on 
the banks of the Merrimac, only a few rods from the future 
mansions of his son John and Judge Tyng, where these 
pictures have been lovingly watched and cared for these 
last hundred years. If he only could have lived two 
months longer, he might have seen the British ships in- 
gloriously sailing away from his own wharf, with all their 
hireling soldiery, and his own beloved Boston, the city of 
his birth, of his marriage, of the birth of all of his noble 
children, and the graves of all he held dearest, with no flag 
from any belfry but the flag of liberty — with no council 
except that elected by the people; little dreaming that in 
I lO years from that very month his own picture would be 
exhibited in this hall, preparatory to a new home with his 
descendants of the fourth generation on the banks of the 
Detroit. 

And now, citizens of Boston, of Massachusetts, of New 



Co rROVIN'CIAL PICTURES. 

England, let me thank you for your kindly attention, and 
beg of you not to feci that the portraits of your old 
worthies are passing away from those to whom they right- 
fully belong, but only from one room to another in the 
great mother home of us all. 

The North-west territory contains as much of the blood 
and heart of the old Massachusetts Province as is left in 
her original boundaries. In the case of these particular 
pictures there are special reasons why their new location 
will be peculiarly appropriate. 

The first governor of that territory was Gen. Arthur 
St. Clair, whose wife was a granddaughter of James Bow- 
doin, a cousin of the wife of Gen. Dearborn. 

This admirable portrait by Gilbert Stuart of Gen. Henry 
Dearborn will find its final home in that city which first 
bore his name when a frontier military post. Chicago, 
whose commercial arms reach out and embrace the conti- 
nent, with patriotic sympathies and with kindly and grow- 
ing love for the arts, will ever loyally and lovingly guard 
the portrait of him who fought with gun and sword for the 
birth of a free republic on yonder Bunker Hill. 



PROVINCIAL riCTURES. 6l 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

Extracts from thk Author's Scrat-Book exhibited 
AT THE Meeting. 



RFXEIPTS : 

Boston, 30 April, 1700. 
Rec'd then of Mr. John Pitts y^ sumni of fifteen pounds for a 
pew in the new Church in Brattle Street, No. 22, being that next 
y*^ west dore on y*" left hand as one enters s'' church. To have 
and enjoy y" said pew to him and his heirs so long as he or they 
shall constantly come to said church and contribute thereto; in 
default thereof, to resign up s'' pew unto the Comittee for s'' 
church for y*= time being, they allowing said Pitts or his heirs 
what he now gives for y"' same. Tho. Brattlk, 

Treas' of s'' Church. 



Mad"' Eliz'' Pitts bought of Wm. Stoddard an half i)ew in the 
Rev. Mr. Sam' Cooper's meeting-house for ^2. 

Boston, 24th July, 1756. Wm. Stoddard. 



Rec'd, Boston, May 31, 1799, of John Pitts, Esq., by the hands 
of Mr. Merrill, one hundred and ninety-two dollars, being the 
sum assessed to the right of the Heirs and assigns of James 
Pitts, Esq., deceased, in the second tax voted by the Plymouth 
Company on the 19th of April, 1798, for the sum of 2376 dollars. 

$192. Thomas L. Winthrop, 

Treasurer to the Plymouth Co. 



FROM JOHN HANCOCK TO JAMES PITTS: 

To THE Hon'- James Pitts, Esq., 

One of the Comittee of the Keimebeck Proprietors. 
Hoifble .S'/>.--Such is the situation of my Brother's affairs that 
there is a necessity of bringing them to a close as soon as possi- 



62 I'KOVIN-CIAI, PICTURES. 

hie, and tlie only objection in the way is his Tract of land at 
Kennebeck, which was granted to my late Uncle and by him 
given to my brother, upon which some dispute arose with Doctor 
Gardiner about it; my Brother's creditors are here from England, 
and 1 am bound in honour to make the most of everything for 
them, and of consequence am desirous of turning this Tract of 
Land to the greatest advantage for them; I must therefore beg 
the fav' of you, Sir, and you will excuse the liberty I take, as 
your meeting is to be this evening, to mention this matter, and 
pray your Influence and interposition that it may be accomo- 
dated. I want nothing but justice, and that I think I am entitled 
to. If it be Doc. Gardiner's property, I have no right to it: if it 
be mine, I have a right to control it. I would by all means 
rational avoid even the appearance of a law-suit with Dr. Gardi- 
ner, if it may be otherways settled, but for the honour of my 
Brother I must see into it. I would ask the fav' of you. Sir, just 
to use your endeavors to bring this to a close. 

I would beg leave to mention that when it is agreeable to the 
Committee that I should exhibit my acc't of cash advanced Mr. 
Goostrey in London, as well as Mr. Smith at Kennebeck, I am 
ready to do it. 

I am with great respect to you and tlie other Gent'" of the 
Committee. Your (Obliged and humble Servt, 

^\''ednesday noon, Feb'y 13, 1771. Joiix H.vncock. 



ELIPHALET FITCH TO JAMES PITTS. 

Kingston, Jam*, Jan'y i, 1775. 

Sir: — ^The very kind and particular regard you have shewn me 
on all occasions cannot fail to excite my warmest wishes for the 
continuance of your welfare, and at this season lead me to wish 
you the return of many happy years. I may not wish you an 
uninterrupted tranquility, for in the varied scenes of life its pleas- 
ures are to be found. 'Tis jjerliaps from the reflection on dangers 
averted and difticulties overcome that we sometimes feel the high- 
est enjoyment; but I will venture no further on this to|)ic, lest 
you should suspect me to be, what I certainly am not, a moralist. 

The jealous attention to the public Liberty which has a])peared 
in all parts of the Continent will, I ho])e, ere long be crowned 
with success. As a favorable circumstance, I have the i)leasure 
to acquaint you that the Assembly of this Island have last week 
passed a Memorial to the King petitioning the Repeal of all the 
late Acts of Parliaments respecting America. This Petition is to 
be forwarded the 7th instant, per the Grantham Packet; but as I 



LETTER OE ELIPHALET EEIXTI. 63 

conceive it may be useful to the cause to have the matter known 
with you as soon as possible, I have procured a copy of it, which 
is now under cover. You will permit me on this occasion to 
observe that your Honour is pledged with mine that this Petition 
shall not be committed to the Press; to avoid which no person 
should be permitted to take a copy of it. Such step would be 
considered here as a very high indecorum and might bring the 
severest censure of the House on the worthy and intimate friend 
from whom I obtained the original draft of this Memorial. More- 
over, an early publication of it with you might injure its reception 
at home. Any other communication of it to your friends is both 
honorable and safe. 

, I doubt not the sentiments it offers to the King will be aj)- 
proved by our PYiends, altho' the diction may not equally claim 
their applause, but in all cases the substance and not the shadow- 
is to be regarded. The Time will not permit me to offer anything 
more than my kind regards to my friends. Miss Pitts, Mr. John 
Pitts, and the young Gentlemen, which you will please to com- 
municate, and believe me always with gratitude and respect. 

Your most Obedt, Humble Servt, Kijpht Fitch. 
P. S. — My respectful compliments are due to Mr. Bowdoin. 
Hon''''' James Pitts, Esq'. 

GOV. BOWDOIN TO JOHN PITTS: 

Mem°. Mr. Flucker paid Mrs. Bayard to Sept. 19, 1774; there 
will therefore be 4 years' interest due from him in Sept., 1778. 
It is proposed that two years' interest, in behalf of Mr. Flucker, 
should be advanced to her. Mr. Bowd" to pay one of them, 
which will be to Sept. 19, 1775, and Mr. Pitts the other, to Sept. 
19, 1776; for which Mrs. Bayard is to give an order on Mr. 
Flucker to each of them of the tenor in y"" enclosed paper. The 
other two years interest may be paid to her if necessary in Sept., 
1778, or after; and in order that it should not be inferred from 
these payments that we supposed ourselves obliged to make good 
Mr. Flucker's deficiencies, Mrs. and Mr. Bayard must write to 
each of us a letter of the same tenor with the enclosed: 

MiDDi.EBOR°, Dec. 6, 1777. 
John Pitts, f^sq. 

Sir: — The foregoing is in substance what I desired Jemmy to 
communicate to you, which he wrote me you approved of I 
have desired Mr. Read to pay Mrs. Bayard in behalf of Mr. 
Flucker, and to take her order therefor on him. This will be for 
the year from Sept., 1774, to Sept., 1775; your payment w-ill be 



64 I'K(.)\"IN(IAI. riCTUKKS. 

for the year next after, which in the order you take you will take 
care to mention. If you think proper you will copy the enclosed 
letter and order above mentioned mutatis mutandis, and then 
deliver them to Mr. Read, that he may get them signed and pay 
the money aforesaid. 

Pray when are we to come to the wedding [meaning to Miss 
Tyng]. Our compliments to the lady and also to Betsey. 

I am respectfully, dear Sir, your most obedient Servt, 

Ja.mp.s Bow do in. 

GOV. BOWDOIN TO SENATOR JOHN ITTTS : 

MiDDLEBOR°, March 3, 1778. 

Dear Sir:— Inclosed is a letter from Major Goodwin which I 
have just received. The contents of it, 1 think, ought to be 
attended to by the Kennebec Company as well as by Individuals. 
The land on Sandy River mentioned therein I suppose is the 
same ye company sold in March, 1775, at public vendue, which 
sale being not yet fully settled, it is needful they should take the 
necessary measures for preventing people settling on it or gaining 
a ])Ossession of it. The lands on y'' back of Bowdoinham, Rich- 
mond, (S:c., it is incumbent on Individuals to see about. Your 
family, Mr. Hancock's heirs, Mr. Jeffries, &c., have large tracts 
there, in which they will be great sufferers if they do not dispos- 
sess the invaders. My own is secured, having 12 or 15 good 
families settled thereon. 

I have lately had a demand on me of a tax on land in one of 
y'^ towns on Kennebec River in consequence of the new mode 
of taxation. This ought to be attended to both by Individuals 
and the Company, according as they are resjiectively interested, 
lest their land be sold for taxes without their knowing anything 
about it. 

How go on y" Constitution, Confederation, &;c. ? Is Mr. Bur- 
goyne to be removed? When and where? Is Phil' to be 
attempted this season? What have you been about, what are 
you doing or going to do in ye Gen' Court? When is Dr. Cooper 
to make you and a certain Lady happy? Our best regards to 
both you and to Betsey. Your most obedt. 

J. lioWDOlX. 

Mr. Pitts, — Where is Mr. Sever? 

I perceive it is intended that you and I shall make good to 
Mr. Bayard's children the deficiency of Mr. Flucker; which what- 
ever y*" law may determine would be contrary to every principle 
of equity and justice. I think therefore that some care should be 



LETTER OF COV. BOWDOIN. 65 

taken about Mr. Flucker's estate and liis lands at the Eastward; 
at least to prevent their falHng into improper hands, as they must 
do if anybody at y'' P'^astward should take upon them y'' Agency. 
1 would therefore suggest to you whether, as you are a consider- 
able creditor, it would not be needful for you to apply for y'' 
agency, or if you should decline it, to see that some faithful per- 
son in or near Boston l)e appointed y"" agent. Possibly Mr. Sav- 
age would undertake. However, to prevent an improper ai.^point- 
ment, it would be best for you to write to the Judge of Probate 
for y'' County of Lincoln (who, I think, is Jon' Bowman, Esq., at 
Pownalboro), and also to y"^ Jndge in y" County of Cumberland, 
on this head: and to speak to Mr. Cushing, y*" Judge for Sutifolk. 
1 had several other things to mention to you, but I have so much 
of my old disorder upon me that I can write no more than to 
■desire you to present my respectful com])liments to (ien' Han- 
cock, Mr. Speaker Adams, and Mr. Secry Warren. 



SENATOR JOHX PITTS TO COL. JONATHAN WARNER: 

Bt)STON, April 2 1 St, 1781. 

Dk.ar Brother: - 1 have had the pleasure to receive your 
favors by Mr. Whipple and Mr. Langdon, and we are glad to hear 
you and sister Warner are well. Mrs. Pitts and myself are much 
obliged by every exj^ression of your regard and kind wishes for 
recovery of her health, which I have the pleasure to inform you 
is in a better state than when I wrote you last; so that she has 
been able to give that attention to poor little Betsey that her dan- 
gerous situation required. Yesterday week she was taken ill of 
the dysentery, and for several days we despaired her life, but she 
is better. It operated very severely on Mrs. Pitts in her weak 
state, altho she was better, and so overwhelmed in anxiety and 
distress that it 's surprising she was able to go through the fatigue 
she did, and indeed the distress of us all has been great. I there- 
fore suppose that Betsey will not require an apology for Miss 
Fanny in not getting her things ready, which will be done as soon 
as i)ossible. 

The box of ]jlate is not yet come from Mr. Savage, but not for 
want of being i)ut in mind of it by me. I will make a ])oint to 
see him about it again. 

We have no news of im])ortance except the battle to the South- 
ward with Green and Cornwallis — the former was obliged to 
retreat with the loss of his cannon, and about 300 killed and 
wounded; but we have an account since that action that Corn- 

5 



66 I'KOVIXCIAI. I'ICTL'KKS. 

wallis is obliged to retreat with precipitation, as you will perceive 
by the inclosed handbills. 

Mrs. Pitts and Fanny with me present our must atiectionate 
regards to you and sister Warner. 

1 am, Sir, with due esteem, your affectionate lirother, 

John I'll is. 

'1\) loNArnAX Waknkr, Ks(n-. 



SENATOR JOHN IM ITS TO COL. J( JXATH.VX WARNKR: 

Boston, November i, 1782. 

1) AR Bkoiher: — I was very glad to hear by Mr. Henderson 
that you all got well home, where 1 hoi)e you found the old Lady- 
well, to whom please to present my respectful compliments, also 
to Col. Sherburn, who 1 will do m)'self the pleasure to call and 
see whenever 1 go to Portsmouth again. •' ''' 

Uncle pjowdoin has been extreme!}- ill with his old disorder, 
but is much better. Col. Pyng a few days past came to Town 
and insisted upon carrying little Hetsey to Dunstable, where I 
e.xpect to go tomorrow to bring her home. If 1 should not, I 
shall write by Brigdier Preble, as the Court propose to rise next 
Wednesday. We have no news. As to the prosi)ect of peace, 1 
do not think it looks so probable as at some time past. The 
French fleet talks of sailing soon, but I much doubt whether they 
will. The crv from Rob't Morris for money is great, and I am 
informed that all the money collected by Mr. Lovell is not as yet 
more than sufficient for one week's demand of the whole sum that 
is to be collected. This is a gloomy story, but we must not now 
abate of the utmost vigor in prosecuting the war, for the enemy, 
there is reason to think, is not better ot!". We now talk of a ta.x 
of six hundred thousand ])ounds specie; where it is to come from 
the Lord knows. \\'hat is mentioned respecting the Continental 
collection of tax is best to be kept to ourselves. 

At present I have only to add my best regards to you and 
sister Warner, and am your afteclionate Brother, 

L^o. Pitts. 

Hon" JoN'^ Warner, Kscj. 

SENATOR JOHN PPrrS TO COL. JONATHAN WARNER: 

Dunstaki.e, June 25, 1786. 
Dear Brother: — I was very sorry to hear by Brother Lendall 
that you were unwell — hope you are better. By him I under- 
stand that Betsey will take care of her little namesake, which, be- 



LETTKR OF JOHN PITTS. 6/ 

ing so early deprived of its mother, must stand in need of her 
friendship, and it gives me pleasure that it is so well bestowed, 
not only for the sake of the child, but because I think Lendall is 
very unfortunate to have so many to take care of, for we men are 
not calculated to bring up children at so early a i)criod, which I 
have had sad experience of. I was in hopes of seeing you before 
this time, and carrying my little girl to see you and sister Warner, 
but my situation has been such as not to be in my power, but 
hope when the Lottery is completed drawing, and one or two 
other matters are over, it will be in my power. My best regards 
attend iietsey and you, and respectful compliments to the old 
Lady. My regards also to the Buttons, which, by this time, I 
suppose, are large enough to be connected with a Coat of any 
size. My little rake, tell Betsey, is a great singer, and that Mrs. 
Hughes, Sargent, or any of her sex can't out-talk her, and, in 
general, has the female weapon in full exercise, and can be saucy 
enough. 

Miss Betsey Temple is very soon to be connected with Mr. 
Thomas L. Winthrojj, and Mrs. Temple is expected next week to 
y*" celebration of the nuptiaL. 

The woods of Dunstable will not afford any news, nor do I 
find much in Boston, but there is as-much luxury there, with as 
little ability, as I suj^pose in any place on the Globe; and the 
state of our Politics is such as is destructive to trade, so that the 
state of the Town appears melancholy, for they are living upon 
one another. 

Col. Tyng [82 years old] lias commenced young man again, 
and is upon the wings of an airy Fancy, expecting to go to 
Boston and from thence to Falmouth. Whether the vehicle will- 
be a balloon or what to transport him, I caivt .say. If 1 should 
be of the party you may expect us to drop in upon you accord- 
ing to the manner of the transportation. At any rate, I hope it 
will not be long before I see you. 

Your affectionate Brother, John Pitt.s. 

Hon. JoN'^ Warner, Ks(}r. 

WM. DAVIS TO HIS SOX-IX-LAW .SAMUEL PITTS: 

Boston, 31st March, 1796. (Fast day). 
Dear Son Pitts: — I received yours, per Mr. Bagley, and as I 
did not incline to sue S. W., I gave the note to James to follow 
your directions. I am very unhappy to hear of your ill turn. I 
hope it will be but of one day's duration. Pray keep up your 
spirits and not let them slip into your shoes. We are all rejoiced 



6S l'K()\I.\(IAl, I'U'IL'RKS. 

to hear that our dear daughter IMtts is on llie recovery. Pray 
tell her from me that she must be exceedingly careful of herself, 
not to take cold, and leave the care of her family for some time 
to come. 

Important to the United States is the decision of O2 members 
of congress in favor of calling for the papers from the President 
relative to the late treaty with Brittain against 37 members who 
were in favor thereof Depend tiiat all things will come out 
right. The Aristocrats begin to hang their heads. Now for our 
tried Patriot, Samuel Adams! The old inveterate Torys are try- 
ing all in their power here to oust him, but their efforts will prove 
abortive. We shall have a large majority for him here and 
Charlestown, Lexington, Ro.xbury, Dorchester, Milton, IJraintree, 
Plymouth, Sandwich, and Worster, and chief y"^ Province of 
Maine. Exert yourself arrj im-vc in Chelmsford for him, and 
also in Tyngsboro. Thomas brings the newspaper where youll 
find considerable news, and among the news are the resolutions 
of the State of Georgia relative to (nmn's rascally ])roceedings 
in regard to the sale of the (Georgia lands. The Georgia bubble 
is broke, to the great dismay of speculators and evil designing 
land-jobbers. It will make a heavy shaking among the dry bones. 

Mr. Pitts, I hope the ReV' will not interest himself in 

the present choice for a Ciov" more than his vote, and would not 
wish him enemys, having a high esteem for him. Remember 
that 5. Adams stood in the gap in i/'/S^ ^'^"d in Gage's Administra- 
tion which tryed men's souls, and those Pigmys who now bark at 
him were afraid to shew their heads. Remember also that many 
who now vote in their carriages are beholden to that same 
Patriot, who was the chief Instrument in i)rocuring their fortunes 
for them by the glorious Revolution, who otherwise would ha\e 
been in obscurity even to this moment. Is not this a truth? 
Why then should y*' old '75 men not exert themselves for tiiis 
tryed Patriot and counterset their evil machinations who en- 
<leavor all in their power to set him aside. 

Wishing you a speedy recovery and your consort, I salute \-ou 
and am your affectionate 

Wm. Davis. 



JAMKS MKKRILL TO CGI.. WARXKR: 

Boston, Aug. 7, 179S. 
Dear Sir:— I last Saturday wrote you by Post to inform you 
of the sickness and of my great anxiety about our young friend, 
James L. Pitts, son of your'late brother Lendall Pitts, which was 



LETTER OE JAMES .MERRILL. 69 

desi;jjned to prepare the minds of his two sisters for more melan- 
choly tidings, which 1 expected would soon reach them, and also 
for your and Mrs. Warner's information of the anxious fears I 
had concerning him. 

I did all in mv i)Ower by providing as able physicians as this 
Town atTorded, but all to no effect. I have now the melancholy 
task assigned me to inform you he is dead. He died on Sunday, 
and I attended his remains and saw them safely deposited that 
evening in the Family tomb. Thus ends the short life of an 
agreeable and promising young man. 1 have not now time to 
write to his sister particularly. I must beg of you to advise them 
in mv behalf Do be so good as to particularly inform them 
that 1 heartily sympathize and condole with them on the loss of 
a ])romising and beloved brother, one from whom they had 
reason to anticipate much pleasure; but as he is now gone, I 
know you will afford them every possible consolation. You may 
rest assured that everything necessary was provided for him even 
to his last moments. 

I have this morning sent up to Mrs. Tarbett tor her to inform 
me what mourning to provide for his sisters, and shall send it by 
next opportunity. I hope this fever has not increased since I 
last wrote you. I am, dear Sir, your very humble servant, 

Jamks Merrill. 

JoN'^ Warner, Escjr. 



SENATOR JOHN PITTS TO COL. WARNER : 

Rdston, July 5, 1S02. 

Dear Brother: — I have been here almost a fortnight to have 
settlement with the late Gov. Gill's Executor about Mr. John 
Boylston's legacy to the Town of Boston, which is not (]uite 
brought to a close, and it has been the occasion of great vexation 
to me. As soon as it is closed I shall return to Tyngsboro, and 
Betsey and myself propose to see you and Betsey at Portsmouth. 
We have been much concerned to hear that my sister has been 
unwell and hope she is recovered to health. We expected to 
have had the pleasure to have seen you before this time, which 
prevented my writing when I was last in town. 

My best regards to you, Betsey, and the rest of the family, in 
which Betsey and Mother Brinley respectfully join with me. 

I am your affectionate Brother, John Pitts. 

Hon. Mr. Warner. 



70 J'KCniNCIAL PICTURES. 

COL. WARXKR TO JAMES MERRILL: 

Portsmouth, Oct. 3, 1804. 

Mr. Iamks Mkkrii.i.: — 1 reed a letter from my Drother, John 
Pitts, Esq. He mentioned that Mrs. Warner's jjicture from Mr. 
Bowdoins shoulti be left in your care, which I desire you would 
be so good as to ship me Ijy one of our vessels to this I'ort, beg- 
ging their care of it. 

1 have not heard anytiiing from you about my Island wharf 
privilege. My brother mentioned that the Selectmen have deter- 
mined that the Flats privilege is forfeited by the sea wall not 
being maintained, which was the condition of the grant. This 
can not be. Their Grant was in 1673 and the Proprietor has 
been in the possession from that time, upwards of 130 years. 
My Hon' Father Pitts bought by deed of warranty which )ou 
have. Peter Chardon's deed, May, 1758. Charnock's deed, 
1 731. Thos. (Jreenough deed, 1744. Mr. Pxiwdoin's deed of 
his father was in 1750, a cjuit claim, but his father bought more 
than forty years, which gives a good title. 

Mr. Priner says that Sandford's land originally 1000 acres 
under one Joliff— but grants made to settlers have im])aired it, 
so that there may not remain more than 600 acres. My Hon. 
Mother Pitts' right is 17 and 1 4 of i 7, which makes her ])art 
about 106 acres. My wife's part of this being 1/6 and 1/4 of 1 6 
makes about 2iJ^ acres. Mr. Priner also says the whole in the 
associates land under AVestbrook is about 1700 acres, i 7 and 
1/4 of I 7 is about 300 acres. My wife's part of this being i 6 
and 1/4 of 1/6 makes 62)4 acres, so that my part of both tracts 
will be 833/^ acres. 

The west Boston lands Brother John Pitts, in liis letter Oct. 
5th, says shall be advertized for sale, (iive me word about Pt. 
Shirley when it is divided. 

As to Pulling point farm, we will consent to sell. I have had 
an offer for my water privilege — this offer may be from Boston. 

My regards to all the family, and am with esteem. 

Your most obedient, Jon.^th.an W.vrner. 



Col. Jonathan Warner of Portsmouth, N.H., married. Feb. 17, 
1 781, Elizabeth Pitts, only daughter of James and Elizabeth- 
Bowdoin Pitts. He was son of Hon. Daniel and Sarah Hill 
Warner. He was born Sept. 6, 1726, and died May 14, 1814. — 
(Wentworth's Gen. 3, p. 316.) Her ])ortrait was ])ainted by Cop- 
ley, and is owned by Thomas Pitts of Detroit. Col. Warner was 



COL. JONATHAN WARNER. 71 

l)ainted by Blackburn, and is a three-quarter picture, and a fine 
■example of the arti.st. It is now owned by the Boston Museum. 
Mrs. Warner died in t8io, and left her estate to her husband, 
•which on his death was devised by him, one-half to the children 
of Lendall I'itts of the tea-party and the other half to his niece. 
Mrs. Klizabeth Sherburne. The fine old family mansion, 46 
Daniel Street, is still standing, and said to be the oldest in Ports- 
mouth. The lightning-rod is said to have been placed on it 
nmder the supervision of Franklin, and the first ever used in 
New Hampshire. 



B. 



PORTRAITS. 

Partial list of portraits of James Bowdoin, his descendants, 
and intermarried, to the fifth generation : 

1' I K S r G K N E R A T I O N . 

James Bowdoin (by Badger), owned by Bowdoin College; a du])li- 
cate by Badger is owned by Thos. Pitts of Detroit. 

Sl'.CO.M) (il'.NERATION. 

Wm. Bowdoin, owned by Bowdoin College. 

Phcebe Murdock, wife of Wm. Bowdoin, owned l)y Bowdoin 

College. 
Elizabeth Bowdoin, wife of James Pitts (by Blackburn, 1757), 

owned by Thos. Pitts. 
James Pitts, husband of Eliz. Bowdoin (by Blackburn, 1757), 

owned by Thos. Pitts. 
Gov. James Bowdoin, cabinet jjortrait by Copley, owned by 

R. C. Winthrop.^-^ 
Elizabeth Erving, wife of Ciov. Jas. Bowdoin. Portraits of Gov. 

Bowdoin and wife by R. Feke, owned by Bowdoin College. 
Thomas Flucker (by Copley), husband of Judith Bowdoin, in the 

l)Ossession of Bowdoin College. 

Third Oener.vt ion. 

James Bowdoin (by C.ilbert Stuart), owned by Bowdoin College. 

R. C. Winthrop also owns a miniature by Malbone. 
Sarah Bowdoin (by Gilbert Stuart), owned by Bowdoin College. 

* R. C. W. also owns a miniature of Gov. Jas. jSowdoin, by Copley. 



72 I'KDVIXCIAI. I'R rruKs. 

Maj.-(icn. Henry Dearborn (by Ci. Stuart), second husband of 
Sarah Bovvdoin, owned by the Calumet Club, Chicago. 

Copies are owned by the U.-S. War Department at Wash- 
ington, by the Chicago Historical Society, by the State House 
at Concord, N. H., by the New-England Museum, and by 
Mrs. Winthroj) (1. Ray, New York. (ien. Dearborn, painted 
by C. \\'. Peale, is at Independence Hall, Phila., and by 
John TruMibull in the ".Surrender of Burgoyne,'"' in the 
Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. 

Klizabeth Bowdoin (by (1. Stuart), wife of Sir John Temple, in the 
possession of R. C. \\'inthrop. Bowdoin College also owns 
a portrait of her and her brother, James Bowdoin, as chil- 
dren, by Gilbert Stuart. 

Sir John Temple (by G. Stuart), husband of Elizabeth l^owdoin,. 
in the possession of R. C. Winthrop. The Temj)le family 
in England own large 3/^ portraits of Sir John and Lady 
Temple, by Trumbull. '1\ L. Winthrop of Ryde, Eng.^ 
owns a cabinet portrait of Sir John Temple, by Copley. 

Elizabeth Pitts (by Copley), wife of Jonathan A\'arner, owned 
by Thos. Pitts. 

Col. Jonathan AVarner (by Blackl)urn), husband of Eliz. Pitts, 
owned by Boston Museum. 

Samuel Pitts (by Copley), owned by tlie estate of the late Samuel 
Pitts. A copy is owned by James P. Bridge. 

J>endall Pitts, miniature, owned by Lendall Pitts Cazeau. 

Elizabeth Fitch, wife of Lendall Pitts, miniature owned by Len- 
dall Pitts Cazeau. There are portraits by Copley of her 
parents, Timothy Fitch and wife, at Plummer Hall, Salem. 

F ( ) r K r 11 G k nek a i ion. 

^Laj.-(ien. Arthur St. Clair (by C. W. Peale), husband of Phcebe 
Bayard, daughter of Mary liowdoin and Balthazar Bayard, 
at Independence Hall, Phila.: engraved for Smith's "The 
St.Clair Papers," which also includes a Life of St.Clair. The 
Hist. Society of Penn. has a copy by Sword. St. Clair was 
also painted by John Trumbull. There is also a miniature 
made at the close of the war, which is to be engraved by 
the Hist. Magazine of Penn.; also a miniature on ivory 
owned by Miss Mary R. Sheets of Indianapolis, Ind. 

Sir Grenville Temple (by Trumbull), son of Sir John and Eliza- 
beth Bowdoin Temple. R. C. AVinthrop owns a drawing of 
James Temple-Bowdoin, brother of Sir Grenville Temple. 

Elizabeth Temple (by Stuart), wife of Gov. Thos. Lindall Win- 
throp, owned by R. C. Winthrop. 



rORT RAITS. 73 

Ciov. Thos. L. Winthrop (by Os<);ood), husband of Eliz. Bowdoin 
Temple, owned by Mass. Historical Society. 
Same (by Osgood), owned by R. C. Winthiop, Jr. 
Same (by Sidly), owned by R. C. Winthrop. Three in all. 

Elizabeth Pitts (by Lawson of Lowell), wife of Robert Brinley, 
owned by W. B. Brinley. 

Robert Brinley (by Lawson), husband of Eliz. Pitts, owned by 
W. B. Brinley. 

Maj. Thos. Pitts, silhouette, owned by Mrs. Henry B. Brown. 
Mrs. Chas. Dudley Farlin owns a portrait of Jonathan Mount- 
fort of Boston (by Copley), father-in-law^ of Maj. Thos. Pitts. 

Fifth G km: rati ox. 

Louisa St. Clair married to Lieut. Robb of the Revolutionary 

Army, a silhouette in Peale's Museum of 1829. 
Elizabeth Bowdoin Temple Winthrop (by Gilbert Stuart), wife of 

Rev. Benj. Tappan, owned by Mrs. E. B. Webb. R. C. 

Winthrop owns a copy by the same artist. 
Sarah Bowdoin (painted in Paris by a French artist), wife of Geo. 

Sullivan. 
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop (by Huntington), in the Speaker's 

Gallery at Washington, and another owned by Mass. Hist. 

Soc. Same (by Healy). He has been painted three times 

by Huntington and once by Healy. 
Samuel Pitts (by Cole of Portland, also by Stanley at Detroit), 

owned by Sarah M. Pitts. 
Sarah Merrill, wife of Samuel Pitts, owned by Sarah M. Pitts. 

Life-size crayon portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pitts (by 

Fred'k E. Wright at Boston) owned by Mrs. Daniel Goodwin. 
Frances Pitts (by Dr. Sanctis of Rome. Italy), wife of Charles 

Merrill, owned by her daughter, Mrs. Senator Thomas W. 

Palmer. 
Charles Merrill, husband of Frances Pitts, also owned by Mrs. 

Palmer. 



74 I'Ki )\I.\( lAl. I'll TLKKS. 



I'OR'rRAir OF (;i-:X. DKARliORX. 

(len. Henry Dearborn's portrait was sent to Chicago and pre- 
sented to the CaUuiiet CUib on May 20, 1886, on occasion of 
their eighth annual reception to the old settlers who were resi- 
dents of Chicago and of age prior to 1840. The beautiful build- 
ing was filled with the old settlers, the members of the Club, and 
their wives and daughters. 

After an eloquent address of welcome to the old settlers by H. 
J. Macfarland, president of the Calumet Club, he introduced Mr. 
L. J. Gage, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, who 
presented the portrait of Cen. Henry Dearborn to the Calumet 
Club on behalf of the following gentlemen: 

C. W. Allen, Wm. A. Fillkk, Kdsox IvKrrn, 

Uri Balcom, Lv.\l\n J. (;.\(-.K, H. J- Macf.vrland, 

I. W. DoANK, W. C. D. Gran.nls, Gko. M. Pullman, 

John B. Drakk, C. M. Hknuerson, Martin Rykrson, 
.\. K. Fairhank, Wm. G. Hihuard, Loris Wampold, 

Chas. L. Hutchinson. 

Mr. Cage said: 

Mr. President: — About one year ago, that small body of 
gentlemen known as the Commercial Club of Chicago made a 
visit to the City of Boston in response to the invitation of a 
similar organization in that city. While there, the attention of 
some of our members was attracted to a celebrated painting 
executed by an American artist, the products of whose genius 
has given a lasting denial to the old affirmation that art can never 
tlourisli under free institutions. The name of that painter wa^ 
(iilbert Stuart, and it is now my i)leasant duty, on behalf of my 
associates,— who, after months of negotiation, have succeeded in 
buying it from its late owners, — to present this work to the Calu- 
met Club. 

This occasion fits well the picture and the picture suits well 
to this occasion. You have with you as honored guests a noble 
company of men and w-omen whose names are intimately asso- 
ciated with Chicago's earliest days. The record of their doings 
must furnish the elements from which our past history is to be 
drawn. It seems therefore peculiarly approi)riate that in this 



GEN. DEARnORN'S TORTRAIT. 75 

presence there should be exposed to view for the first time in 
Chicago, Stuart"s original portrait of Maj.-Gen. Henry Dearborn. 
The early military outpost at Chicago was named for him in 
recognition of his distinguished service as a soldier of the Revo- 
lution, and when afterward he became secretary of war, his mind 
and thought were given to its maintainence and support. Under 
the protecting guns of that rude fortress many ot these, your 
guests, found peace and safety. And now, sir, without further 
delay, I commit to your keeping this historic treasure. The 
sympathy and affection you have so well shown to the survivors 
of our early days is a sufficient guarantee that this canvas, made 
alive by American genius and made eloquent by historic associa- 
tions, will be carefully cherished by you. I hand you herewith 
the muniments of title and the names of those whom I have the 
honor to represent. 

President Macfarland responded as follows: 

In behalf of the Calumet Club, I thank you and the gentle- 
men vou represent for the generous gift of so rare and valuable 
a portrait of Gen. Henry Dearborn, whose name is so closely 
linked with the history of Chicago. 

We will cherish it for the memory of the eminent man whose 
likeness it is. We will cherish it for the fame of the great master 
who [)ainted it, and of whose skill it is so marked an example. 
We will cherish it for these old settlers of Chicago, whom, by 
this jjresentation, you and your associates wish to honor, ^^'e 
will cherish it for the respect and good-will of the generous 
donors who gave it. We will hang it in a prominent place upon 
these walls, and reverently preserve it for our successors. 

We sincerely and heartily thank those members of the Com- 
mercial Club who have, through }ou, sir, given us possession of 
such a treasure of art to decorate our Club-house. 

President Macfarland said the Club was fortunate in having 
present one who knew the history of the Dearborn family and 
of this portrait. He then introduced Daniel (ioodwin, Jr., who 
said : 

Mr. President: — It is with great pleasure I comply with 
your request to say a (ew words about the portrait of (Jen. 
Dearborn. While investigating the facts of his life, I became 
acquainted with this portrait, and conceived the hope that it 
might ultimately be owned in Chicago. I first saw it in the 
home of his grandson, Henry G. R. Dearborn of Roxbury, in 



76 I'RUNINCIAL riCTL'RES. 

1883. The owner was then 74 years old, and remembered the 
picture as having been in the family since his childhood. It was 
])ainted by Ciilbert Stuart in Boston in 181 2, the year in which 
Dearborn was appointed major-general by President Madison. 
Stuart was then in the very prime of his days and at the height 
of his fame, and the most celebrated portrait painter of that 
period. His portraits of Wasliington and the generals of the 
Revolution, of George III. and (ieorge IV., the duke of North- 
umberland, and of Benjamin \\'est, and Trumbull, and Sir Joshua 
Reynolds had placed him in the front rank of that most cele- 
brated band of portrait painters. 

And here I feel sure I will be pardoned for calling attention 
to the fact that America took high rank from its very birth in 
art as it did in war, politics, and statesmanship. The very best 
minds of Great Britain and America have often eulogized the 
warriors and statesmen of our Revolution and the era of the 
adoption of the constitution as men never surpassed in recorded 
history for the breadth and vastness of their ideas and the power 
and energy with which they expressed them. Looking back to 
that seething furnace of ideas and heroic deeds, the artist has 
been but slightly remembered; but where, I ask, can you find in 
any country or era such a company of portrait-painters as Copley, 
West, Trumbull, Sully, AUston, Peale, and Stuart? You may 
look in vain through the national galleries of Europe for any 
siich collection of faces as have come down to us from those 
American pencils. 

When Washington Allston exhibited to Sully one of Stuart's 
masterpieces. Sully said: "I never saw a Rembrandt, Rubens, 
Van Dyck, or Titian etpial to it. What say you?" Allston 
answered: "I say that all combined could not have equaled it." 
In 1812, after his portraits of Washington had made Stuart 
immortal, he painted this rare work of art, and its companion 
piece, the younger Gen. Dearborn, then collector of the port of 
Boston. This portrait has been in the posse.ssion of the family 
ever since until now. It first hung in the old Brinley place at 
Roxbury, then after Gen. Dearborn's marriage to Sarah Bowdoin, 
widow of James Bowdoin, the chief i)atron of Bowdoin College, 
it hung in their residence in Boston, corner of Milk and Hawley 
Streets, in the same house where her kinsman, Robert C. Win- 
throp, was born. In that old mansion this picture looked down 
upon the festal gatherings of Lafayette and his companions in 
arms, and in i8i"7 upon a great ball given to President Monroe. 
The portrait has been copied six times; once by Stuart himself 
for some member of the family, and now owned by Mrs. Win- 
throp G. Ray of New York;' once by Brackett, for the war 



GEN. DEARBORN S PORTRAIT. // 

dei)artment at Washington; once by Cole, for Col. Joshua 
Howard of Detroit; once by Tenney, for the statehouse at Con- 
cord; once by (ireenleaf, for the New-England museum, and 
lastly for the Chicago Historical Society, and presented to it on 
the eightieth anniversary of the first occupation of Fort Dearborn. 

Stuart painted another jjortrait of (ien. Dearborn on a panel, 
which he gave to his i)upil, Xeagle, and which is now owned by 
Mr. Herbert ^^'elsh of Philadelphia. Mason says "it represents 
a large, fleshy-faced, but fine-looking man, with short gray hair, 
coming nearly to a point on the crown of the head, blue eyes, 
without high lights, looking at the spectator with a quiet, kindly 
expression. The mouth is painted as only an artist of the highest 
order could paint it, with a faint smile lurking aroimd the corners, 
giving the idea that the figure is about to speak in reply to some 
remark that has been made. The coat, rich in color, is a brownish 
black, and on the breast hangs the order of the Cincinnati." 

There is a i)ortrait of Cen. Dearborn, by Charles Wilson Peale, 
in Independence Hall, Philadelj^hia, and another in the "Surren- 
der of IHurgoyne," by Trumbull, in the rotunda of our national 
capitol. I know of no other general but Washington w^ho was 
painted by three such artists as Trumbull, Peale, and Stuart. I 
congratulate this Club on ])ossessing the finest ])icture of them 
all. \Mien his grandson died, in 1884, the widow soon discov- 
ered that it would be necessary to sell the portrait, but never 
offered it for sale, and waited in hope that some institution in 
Chicago would ofter to give it a i)ermanent home, feeling that 
there was no ])lace so appropriate for the original picture as 
Chicago. Happily some members of our ever-generous Com- 
mercial Club saw the picture in the old state-house, and have 
paid a liberal price to present it to this Calumet Club. 

Last week a notable company of Bostonians took leave of this 
picture of their old liero, and greeted with hearty feeling the con- 
cluding sentiment of the speaker on that occasion. 



l-efC, 



78 PROVINCIAL PICTURES. 

D. 



EARLY PAIXTKKS OF BOSTOXIAXS. 

John Smibert, - painted in Boston trom 1728 to 1750 

Josepli Badger, - . „ „ „ 1740 to 1750 

Jonathan Blackburn, « « « 1750 to 1765 

John Singleton Copley, m ^ m 1754 to 1774 

Benjamin West, painted mostly in Philadelphia and New York 
from 1754 to 1760, and among others painted several Bos- 
tonians. 

Charles Wilson Peale, the earliest painter of Gen. Washington, 
between 1776 and 1826 painted many of the leading J^os- 
tonians, numbers of them now hang in Independence Hall, 
Philadelphia: Franklin, Hancock, (.ireene, Lincoln, Picker- 
ing, Stuart, Adams, Ward, Dearborn, Knox, St. Clair, Warren, 
and others. 

John 'I'rumbuU graduated at Harvard in 1773, and studied his 
art tirst in Boston, and ultimately painted nearly all the 
Boston soldiers and statesmen of the Revolution. 

Col. Henry Sargent painted Peter I'ancuil, now hanging in Fan- 
euil Hall, about 1790. 

Ciilbert Stuart painted mostly in Boston, from 1793 ^^^ 1828. 

FMward G. Malbone, painted in Boston from 1800 to 1807. 

Washington AUston, graduated at Harvard in 1800, and painted 
in Boston and Cambridge from 181 7 to 1840. 

Thomas Sully, painted in Boston in 183 1, and at different times 
and places painted prominent Bostonians. 

Chester Harding was the popular jiainter in Boston in 1823, his 
picture of U'ebster making him celebrated. 

Daniel Huntington began to paint about 1840, ;ind in his famous 
Republican Court he introduced several Bostonians from 
the original pictures of Copley, Malbone, and Stuart. 

\\'m. H. Furness had his stutlio in Boston, and, though dying at 
40 in 1867, left many of the finest canvases of a generation 
already disappearing. 

(it:oR(;K P. A. He.alv. 

It is fitting that this list should close with the name of one 
who will be remembered by future generations as peculiarly 
identified with both Boston and Chicago. He was born in the 
City of Boston in 18 13, and every visitor of Faneuil Hall sees 
there -one of his best examples and one of the finest historic 



GEORGE P. A. HEALY. 79 

pieces ever painted, " Webster's reply to Hayne," which contains 
not only the grand, rugged, and fascinating head of Webster 
himself, but one hundred and thirty portraits of the senators and 
celebrities of 1830. 

As Ciilbert Stuart was a connecting link between the colonial 
era and the succeeding age of full republican success, so Healy 
is today the connecting link between the age of Stuart, closed 
in 1828, and the today of 1886, and most emphatically a con- 
necting link between the art and history of Boston and the art 
and history of Chicago. It is not a little remarkable that some 
of the finest works of the artist who died nearly sixty years ago 
were heads painted also by our Healy of today, Daniel Webster, 
Edward Everett, and others. 

Mr. Healy was a boy in Boston when Stuart died, and it was 
Stuart's daughter — herself a first-class artist — who first perceived 
the signs of genius in young Healy. She introduced him to 
Sully, who asked him to coi)y one of Gilbert Stuart's heads. 
When it was completed. Sully said to him: " By all means, Mr. 
Healy, make painting your profession." Like Stuart, he has 
roved over the best parts of Europe and America, and painted 
many of the royal families of England, France, and (Germany, 
and hundreds of the most famous men of America. 

Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman truly said: "Rugged, forcible, char- 
acteristic, the portraits of Healy, when the subject is favorable 
and the artist in earnest, are among the best of their kind, and 
probably no American painter of our day has delineated so 
many eminent men. The West has afforded iiim a new and 
profitable field of late years, and he has made his headquarters 
at Chicago."' 

Mr. Healy painted in Boston from 1831 to 1834, and then 
went to Italy. He returned in 1838, by express desire of Louis 
Philliije, then king of France, to paint a copy of Stuart's famous 
portrait of Washington: the king saying he had seen Stuart at 
work on the original in his own studio. At a famous reception 
by Gen. Cass, then minister to France, the king's picture, painted 
by Healy, was placed between those of Washington and Guizot, 
and the king boasted next day of his having been placed in such 
good company. 

A list of Mr. Healy's Chicago portraits alone would be too 
lengthy for this place. The enormous concentration of capital 
in this city and the attraction of master minds and vast organiz- 
ing and administrative forces to this spot, must forever make 
this one of the wonderful capitals of the world, and in future 
ages those who wish to study the faces of the founders and 
leaders of Chicago from 1836 to 1886 will look to the canvases 



8o PROVINCIAL liCTUKES. 

of (Ico. 1*. A. Healy, as we now look to those of (iilbert Stuiirt 
for tlie celebrated men of 1 776-1828. 

The fame of many of these Chicago pictures has ceased to 
ha\ c merely a local or family interest, and has become not only 
National but world wide; and it is safe to predict that one hun- 
dred years hence the student of history and the lover of freedom 
and free institutions the world over will here study with emotion 
and admiration the Healy portraits of Presidents Lincoln and 
(irant, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, Admiral Porter, and 
their contemporaries. 

In the same grand salon of the Calumet Club of Chicago 
where the Dearborn portrait by Stuart now hangs, may be seen 
the historical picture by Healy, loaned by Mr. Ezra B. McCagg, 
representing the conference between Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, 
and Porter on board the president's flagship. The Qiicai, on the 
28th of March, 1865, at City Point. 

This famous conference, touching the terms to be given to the 
rebels upon the surrender then deemed imminent and close at 
hand, is fully described by (ien. Sherman in a letter to Hon. L N. 
Arnold, Nov. 28, 1872 (Arnolds "Life of Lincoln," p. 421): 

" Though I can not attempt to recall the words spoken by any 
one of the persons present on that occ;asion, I know we talked 
generally about what was to be done when Lee's and Johnston's 
armies were beaten and dispersed. On this point, Mr. Lincoln 
was very full; he said that he had long thought of it, that he 
hoi)ed the end could be reached without more bloodshed, but in 
any event he wanted us to get the deluded men of the rebel 
armies disarmed and back to their homes; that he contemplated 
no revenge, no harsh measures, but (piite the contrary, and that 
their sufferings and hardships in the war would make them the 
more submissive to law. 

" In Chicago, about July of that year, when all the facts were 
fresh in my mind, I told them to Geo. P. A. Healy, the artist, 
who was casting about for a subject for an historical painting, 
and he adopted this interview. Mr. Lincoln was then dead, but 
Mr. Healy had a portrait which he himself had made at Spring- 
field some five or six years before. '•' * For General Grant, 
Admiral Porter, and myself he had actual sittings, and I am 
satisfied the four portraits in this group of Healy's are the best 
extant. I think Admiral Porter gave Healy a written description 
of our relative positions in that interview, also the dimensions, 
shape, and furniture of the cabin of T/ie Qi/cai; but the rainbow 
is Healy's— tvpical, of course, 01 the coming peace.'" "' * 

Mr. McCagg says that Mr. Healy made a personal study of 
the cabin itself before painting the jjicture. 



GEORGE P. A. HEALV. 8 1 

The original portrait of President Lincoln, alluded to by Gen. 
Sherman as made before the civil war, is first on the priceless list 
of pictures dedicated by Mr. Healy as a gift to Chicago, to be 
placed in the Newberry Library Building after Mr. Healy"s death. 
The citizen of Chicago who remembers that these forty pictures 
were painted by the genial artist from life, and dwells but for an 
instant on the scenes and events which those names suggest, can 
not but be thankful to Boston for producing such a hand and 
brain. Gen. Grant and Admiral Porter come next on the list 
to Lincoln, then the king and queen of Roumania, life-sized, 
and magnificently framed at Bucharest by the royal order as a 
present to the artist; then our gallant Sheridan; followed by the 
"plumed knight," orator, and statesman, James G. Blaine; then 
the Boston historian. Motley, honored the world over; Hart, , the 
sculptor; Archbishop McCloskey; the Boston merchant prince, 
Nathan Appleton; the refined and eloquent Bishop Duggan; and 
Lord Lyons, the friend of Gov. Seward, and embassador from Great 
Britain all through our civil war; Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, 
still at 8 1 delighting the world with his scientific genius; Tiers, 
the statesman, and Guizot, the French historian of Washington, 
the prime minister under Louis Phillipe; and Gen. Charles R. 
Fox, the son of the celebrated Lady Holland. 

Add to these varied celebrities the names of Franz Liszt, the 
distinguished Hungarian musician, Henry M. Stanley, the roman- 
tic explorer of Africa, and the Princess of Oldenburg, and you 
will still have less than half of the treasures which ]\L-. Healy's 
munificent store-house will give to Chicago art and history in the 
Newberry Library Building. 

Mr. Perkins, who wrote "The Life and Works of Copley," sa}s 
that no complete list of Mr. Copley's works had ever been 
known. Mr. Mason, who wrote "The Life and Works of Gilbert 
Stuart,"' says the same about Stuart's works. Mr. McCagg tells 
me there is no complete list by Mr. Healy or any one else of Mr. 
Healy"s works. All admit that such a list is a desideratum, and 
having become interested in the subject, I propose to make a 
catalogue of his works, to be kept by the Chicago Historical 
Society for the benefit of the public. 

I hereby invite all who feel an interest in the subject to send 
to me a memorandum of any original works of Mr. Healy in 
their possession or control, with the full name of the subject, 
when and where painted, and the size of each painting, with any 
facts, memoirs, or anecdotes illustrating the subject or the life 
or character of the painter. 

94 Washington Street, 

Chicago, June, i886. 

6 



INDEX 



Adani!:, Charles Francis, 37. 
Adams, John, 14, 19, 20, 23, 27. 31, 

33^ 37. 43. 44, 47. 48, 49. 53. 58. 
Adams, John Ouincy, 14, 24, 37, 49. 
Adams, Samuel, 20, 22, 26, 27, 30, 

36, 42, 43, 47. 48,49, 52, 55, 58, 74. 
Allen, C. W., 74. 
Allston, Washington, 76, 78. 
Appleton, Nathan, 43, 81. 
Arnold, Isaac X., So. 
Austin, Benjamin, 30, 44. 
Austin, Samuel, 30, 35, 57. 

B. ' 

Badger, Joseph, 4, 7, 71, 78. 

Balcom, Uri, 74. 

Bailey, Nathaniel, 55. 

Baudouin, Pierre, 9. 

Bayard, John, 16, 49. 

Bayard, Mary ?5owdoin and Baltha- 
zar, 10, 16, 72. 

Belcher, Andrew, 23. 

pjernard, Gov., 23, 24, 26, 28. 

Blackburn, J. B., 4, 5, 78. 

Blaine, James G., 81. 

Bowdoin, Elizabeth, 11, 15, 40, 72. 

Bowdoin, James, the Councillor, 3, 
4, 7, 9. io, 15, 65, 71. 

Bowdoin, Gov. James, 3, 8, 17, 18, 
20, 24, 32, 33, 34, 37, 40, 41, 44, 
47. 48, 58, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71. 

Bowdoin, James 3d, 8, 37, 63, 65, 71. 

Bowdoin, Judith, 23, 71. 

Bowdoin, I'hiL'be, 71. 

Bovvdoin, Sarah, 71. 

Bowdoin, William, 15, 72. 

Bowers, Jerathmiel, 44. 

Boynton, Dea., 43. 
'Bradbury, John, 23. 

Bradford, Gamaliel, 22, 23, 24. 

Bradford, John, 43. 

Brattle, Thomas, 17, 61. 

Brattle, William, 4, 23. 

Bridge, Ebenezer, 7. 



Bridge, James P., 72. 
Brinley, Robert, and wife, 73. 
Ikinley, William B., 15, 73. 
Brown, Mrs. Henry B., 73. 
Browne, Stephen, and wife, 4. 
liurrage, William C, 3. 
BuUen, Moses, 55. 
Butler, Gov. B. K., 3. 



Calumet Club, 10, 74, 75, 76, 77. 

Carr, Col., 28, 30. 

Cass, L. , 79. 

Chadburn, Benjamin, 44. 

Chauncy, Dr., s^, 47. 

Chandler, John, 23. 

Church, Jjenjamin, 30, 43, 52, 53. 

Colman, Dr. Benjamin, 14, 17. 

Cooper, Dr. Samuel, 17, 33,43,47, 67. 

Copley, J. S. , 4, 5, 27, 36, 72, 73-76, 78. 

Gushing, Caleb, 44. 

Gushing, Thos., 22, 30, 38, 48, 49, 53. 

Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, ^;^. 

D. 

Dalrymple, Col., 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. 

Dana, Francis, 34, 38. 

Dana, Richard, 38. 

Danforth, Samuel, 23, 28, 44. 

Danielson, Timothy, 44. 

Dartmouth, Lord, 46, 51, 

Davis, Aaron, 55. 

Davis, William, 67, 68. 

Dearborn, Gen. Henry, 4, 10, 72, 74, 

75. 76, 77- 
Dearborn, H. A. S., 75. 
Derby, Richard, 44. 
De.xter, Franklin, 37. 
Dexter, Samuel, 6, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 

29, 30. 37, 40, 44, =.3> 55, 58- 
Dexter, Wirt, 38. 
Doane, J. W. , 74. 
Drake, John B. , 74. 
Drake, S. G., 23. 
Duggan, Bishop, 81. 



INDEX. 



E. 

Elli~. Abner, 55. 

Ervint,r, John, 20, 23, 28, 44, 53. 

F. 

Faiibank, X. K., 74. 

Farley, Michael, 44. 

Farlin, Mrs. Chas. D., 73. 

Feke, Robert, 71. 

Fitch, Eliphalet, 62. 

Fitch, Timothy, and wife, 66. 

Flucker, Thomas, 3, 15, 16, 23, 48, 

71- 

Foster, Jedediah, 44. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 32, ;ii, 46. 
Freeman, Enoch, 44, 45. 
Frothingham, R., 35, 53. 
Fuller, William A., 74. 
Furness, Wni. II., 78. 

G. 

Gage, Lyman J., 74. 

Gage, Gen. Thomas. 24, 28, 46. 

Gardiner, S., 20. 

George III., 46, 76. 

Gerry, Elbridge, 55, 58. 

Gill, Gov. Moses, 4. 

Goldthwait, Ezekiel, 30. 

Grannis. W. C. D., 74. 

Grant, U. .S., 80, 81. ^ 

Gray, Harrison, 23, 28. 

Clreenleaf, Benjamin, 44. 

Greenleaf, Joseph and Wm., 43, 55. 

Guild, Curtis, 3, 4. 

Guizot, 79-81. 

H. 

Hallowell, Benjamin, 20. 

Hancock, John, 16, 19, 20, 22, 30, 

35> 36, 42, 53, 54, 55, 61. 
Harding, Chester, 78. 
Hawley, Joseph, 22, 38, 54, 58. 
Healy,'Geo. P. A., 73, 78, 79, 80, 81. 
Henderson, C. M., 74. 
Henshaw, Joshua, 30. 
Hewes, G. R. T., 42. 
Hibbard, Wm. G., 74. 
Hill, John, 23. 
Holmes, O. W., 17, 39. 
Hubbard, Thomas, 23, 28. 
Huntington, D., 73, 78. 
Hutchinson, Charles L. , 74. 
Hutchinson, C. G., 3. 



Hutchinson, Gov. Thos., 15, 25, 26, 
27, 28, 31, 32, 40,42, 43, 44-6, 47. 

I. 

Inches, W. IT., 30. 

J- 

Jackson, Joseph, 30. 

K. 

Keith, Edson, 74. 
Knox, Gen. Henry, 23. 



Leonard, George, 44. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 80, 81. 
Lincoln, Benjamin, 23. 
Lincoln, F. W., 3. 
Lindall, Elizabeth, 7, 14. 
Lindall, James. 14. 
Lindall, Susannah, 4, 14, 15. 
Lowell, Jas. K., 38, 58. 
Lowell, John, 38. 
Lynde, Beniamin, 11. 

M. 

Macfarland, H. I., 74, 75. 
Malbone, E. G., 78. 
Marshall, Thomas, 35, 57. 
Mason, Jonathan, 30. 
McCagg", Ezra B., .80, 81. 
McCloskey, Archbishop, 81. 
Merrill, Charles, and wife, 67. 
Merrill, James, 68. 
Molineaux, William, 30, 43. 
Morris, Robert, 72. 
Motley, J. L., 81. 
Mountfort, Jonathan, 4, 73. 

N. 

Neagle, John, 77. 
Xewell, Timothy, 35, 55. 
Nichols, Ichabod, 3. 



Otis, James, 7, 17, 22, 23, 44. 
P. 

Paine, Robert T., 48, 49. 
Paine, Timothy, 23. 
Palmer, Thomas, and wife, 73. 
Palmer, Col., 58. 
Parsons, S. IL, 19. 



S4 



INDKX. 



Peak, Charles \V., 72, 77, 78. 

remberton, Samuel, 30. 

I'hillips, Samuel, 44. 

Phillips, William, 30, 44, 52. 

Pickering, Timothy, 49, 55. 

Pierpont, Robert, 43. 

Pitts, iJaruih, 11, 12, 13, 14. 

Pitts, Kli/.abeth Bowdoin, 4, 5, 7, 66. 

Pitts, James, 3, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17, 
18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 
30. 3^ 32, 33. 34, 40, 41, 44, 47> 
5'. 53. 58, 61, 62. 

Pitts, John, the Settler, 7, 9, 11, 12, 

13. 14- 
Pitts, John, the Patriot, 7, 19, 34, 36, 

.43, "51. 52, 54, 55, 57, 7i, 72, 73, 75- 
Pitts, Lendall, 34, 35, 39, 42, 72. 
Pitts, Samuel, 4, 7, 34, 35, 42, 72, 73, 74 
Pitts, Thomas, 7, 71, 73. 
Pitts, William, 34. 
Pordage, Hannah, 10, 15. 
Porter, D. I)., 80, Si. 
Powell, Jeremiah, 23, 44. 
Powell, William, 43. 
Prescott, James, 44. 
Prescott, Col. Wm., 38, 56. 
Pullman, George M., 74. 



^uincy, Norton, 44. 



Ray, Mrs. W. G., 72, 76. 
Revere, Paul, 53. 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 76. 
Robb, Lieut., and wife, 73 
Ropes, Nathaniel, 23. 
Royall, Isaac, 3, 23. 
Ruddock, John, 30. 
Russell, Earl, 45. 
Russell, James, 23, 28. 
Ryerson, Martin, 74. 



Sanctis, Dr., of Rome, 73. 
Sargent, Menry, 78. 
Scollay, John, 35, 57. 
Seaver, William, 44, 58. 
Sewall, David, 19. 
.Sherburne, Col., 72. 
Sheridan, Philip, 81. 
Sherman, W. T., 80, 81. 
Smibert, John, 4, 5, 8, 78. 



St. Clair, fien. Arthur, 60, 72. 
Stoddard, William, 14, 61. 
Stuart, Gilbert. 4, 5, 6, 71. 7 

75, 76, 7«, 79- 
.Sullivan, George, and wife, 67. 
.Spooner, Walter, 48. 
Sully, T., 76, 78, 79. 
.Sumner, Gov. I., and son, 38. 
Sweetzer, John, 43. 



Tappan, lienjamin, and wife, 73. 
Temple, Elizabeth. 32, ^;^, 63, 72. 
Temple, Sir Grenville, 32, 72. 
Temple, Sir John, 32, 33, 66, 72, ~: 
Trumbull, John, 72, 76, 77, 78. 
Trumbull, Jonathan, 19. 
Tuckerman, II. T. , 79. 
Tudor, William, 22, 34, 52. 
Tyng, John. 7, 54, 59, 67, 72. 
Tyler, Royall, 23. 27, 28, 29, 30. 



\'anderkemp, J. A., 27. 

W. 

Wainpold, Louis, 74. 
Ward, Artemas, 40, 44, 53. 
Warner, Col. J., 66, 70, 71, 72, 73, 

,75: 76.' 
W'arren, James, 56. 
Warren, Gen. Joseph, 3, 20, 36, 52, 

.53, .55, 58, 59- 
W ashington, Gen., 46, 56, 57, 58, 79. 
Webster, Daniel, 3, 25. 37, 48, 79. 
Wells, .S. A., 32. 
Welsh, Herbert, 77. 
Wendell, Jacob, 17. 
W^endell, Uliver, 35, 38,43, 52, 53, 57. 
AVest, Benjamin, 76, 78. 
Went worth, John, 19, 70. 
Winsor, Justin, 22. 
Winthrop, John, 11, 15, 26, ^7^, 34, 

40, 44, 47, 58. 
Winthrop, Robert C, 24, 32, 36, 37, 

71, 72, 73, 76. 
Winthrop, Robert C, Jr., 73. 
Winthrop, Thomas L., 32, 37, 61, 

67, 68, 72, 73. 
Wright, Frederick E., 4, 73. 

Y. 

Young, Thomas, 43. 



LB My '05 



